What Petroleum Engineering Graduates Earn

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

For Petroleum Engineering, the federal file supports exactly three earnings snapshots, and this page prints all of them: $96,207 one year after graduation, $103,421 at four years, $116,694 at five. The weighting note matters: medians here count graduates, not programs, across 1,674 people in the five-year pool, which is why they can sit above or below the unweighted middle program shown in the next column.

Five years out, the median graduate earns $116,694, which is $20,487 more than the year-one median of $96,207 (21% growth). Set against the median field overall ($45,010 at year one, $65,763 at year five), this field starts above the pack and ends above it.

Scorecard separates the first-year figure by Pell history for this field: $89,368 for graduates who received Pell, $99,898 for those who did not. The $10,530 difference tracks institutional mix and starting networks far more than it tracks the credential itself, and it is printed here because a Pell student comparing programs deserves the unblended number.

Inside its own CIP family, Petroleum Engineering ranks 2 of 17 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $97,669. Its closest sibling is Computer Engineering at $120,186, above this field's $116,694. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Petroleum Engineering stands number 4 by five-year earnings and number 1 by first-year earnings, and number 11 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 7 places.

The debt side of the same degree

The median graduate in this field leaves school owing $17,738 in federal loans, the graduate-weighted median across the 7 programs reporting debt. That is 18% of the first-year median earnings, or about 2.2 months of gross pay at $96,207 a year. On the standard 10-year plan at the 2026-27 undergraduate rate of 6.52%, the payment is $202 a month and interest adds $6,453 over the life of the loan. Price your own borrowing with the student loan payoff calculator, and test the whole degree in the college ROI calculator or the college major ROI calculator.

Where graduates of this field earn the most

One field, many markets: the five-year median for Petroleum Engineering is $116,694 nationally, yet the strongest programs below run far ahead of it. The ranking keeps a 30-graduate floor under every entry, and Texas Tech University heads the list at $143,541.

A program median describes that program's own graduates in that program's own labor market; Texas Tech University at $143,541 is evidence about a place and a mix of students, not a wage offer. Put the same programs' prices next to these figures with the degree cost calculator and the net price estimator before ranking anything.

Two more facts about the shape of this field: the five highest-paying programs in the table account for only 32.3% of the 1,674 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 $143,541 sits 23% above the national field median of $116,694. Its median debt, $14,711, runs below the field median of $17,738, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.