What Biological and Physical Sciences Graduates Earn

Median earnings at 1, 4, and 5 years (College Scorecard)

Start with the shape of the table: Biological and Physical Sciences pays $40,786 at the first measured horizon and $78,287 at the last, and those two medians rest on 2,948 and 3,617 graduates counted respectively. The headline figures weight each reporting program by its graduates counted, so the 400-graduate program moves the national number more than the 12-graduate one; the unweighted column beside it shows the middle program, plain and simple.

Earnings in this field climb $37,501 between the first and fifth year, a 92% rise that beats the all-fields pattern (the median field in this dataset pays $45,010 at year one and $65,763 at year five). Early-career growth this shape usually means the first job is a foothold: licensure, a portfolio, or a first promotion does the heavy lifting.

One more cut of the year-one data: Pell recipients in Biological and Physical Sciences post a median of $46,373, non-recipients $38,032. That $8,341 gap is the distance between two different student populations studying under one field name, and it narrows or widens by institution, which the program table below hints at.

Inside its own CIP family, Biological and Physical Sciences ranks 2 of 8 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $62,349. Its closest sibling is Cognitive Science at $85,575, above this field's $78,287. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Biological and Physical Sciences stands number 56 by five-year earnings and number 131 by first-year earnings, and number 149 from the lowest median debt. Those three ranks together are the field's fingerprint: high earn rank with a low debt rank is the combination students are actually shopping for, and this field's spread between them is 93 places.

The debt side of the same degree

Across the 34 programs that report debt for Biological and Physical Sciences, the median graduate owes $23,601. Set beside the $40,786 year-one median, the debt is 58% of first-year gross earnings, about 6.9 months of pay before tax. Repaid on the standard 10-year schedule at 6.52%, it costs $268 monthly and $8,586 in interest. The student loan payoff calculator replays that schedule with your numbers, and the college ROI calculator weighs the full cost against the earnings table above.

Where graduates of this field earn the most

The national median hides the real spread: inside Biological and Physical Sciences, individual programs post five-year medians far from $78,287 in both directions. Below are the highest, filtered to programs with 30 or more graduates counted at five years; Thomas Edison State University sits first at $84,079.

Treat the top of this table as a research list, not a ranking to enroll by: medians reflect local labor markets and student mix as much as teaching. The honest comparison pairs each program's earnings here with its net price from the net price estimator and its four-year total from the degree cost calculator.

Two more facts about the shape of this field: the five highest-paying programs in the table account for only 22.5% of the 3,617 graduates counted at five years, so the top of the table is a thin slice and not the field's center; and the leading program's five-year median of $84,079 sits 7% above the national field median of $78,287. Its median debt, $7,334, runs below the field median of $23,601, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.