What Geological and Earth Sciences/Geosciences Graduates Earn

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

The three rows below are the whole earnings story Scorecard can tell about Geological and Earth Sciences/Geosciences: $45,317, then $61,632, then $64,859. Each median is graduate-weighted, built from 86 programs at year one and 152 at year five, and the unweighted program median sits alongside so a reader can see how much the weighting itself is doing.

Earnings in this field climb $19,542 between the first and fifth year, a 43% rise that trails 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 Geological and Earth Sciences/Geosciences post a median of $45,941, non-recipients $46,385. That $444 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, Geological and Earth Sciences/Geosciences ranks 4 of 4 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $66,076. Its closest sibling is Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology at $66,076, above this field's $64,859. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Geological and Earth Sciences/Geosciences stands number 96 by five-year earnings and number 90 by first-year earnings, and number 92 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 4 places.

The debt side of the same degree

Across the 67 programs that report debt for Geological and Earth Sciences/Geosciences, the median graduate owes $20,600. Set beside the $45,317 year-one median, the debt is 45% of first-year gross earnings, about 5.5 months of pay before tax. Repaid on the standard 10-year schedule at 6.52%, it costs $234 monthly and $7,494 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 Geological and Earth Sciences/Geosciences, individual programs post five-year medians far from $64,859 in both directions. Below are the highest, filtered to programs with 30 or more graduates counted at five years; The University of Texas at Austin sits first at $96,718.

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 12.0% of the 5,278 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 $96,718 sits 49% above the national field median of $64,859. Its median debt, $13,000, runs below the field median of $20,600, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.