What Statistics Graduates Earn

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

Start with the shape of the table: Statistics pays $68,458 at the first measured horizon and $98,009 at the last, and those two medians rest on 2,478 and 1,626 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.

From $68,458 in the first year to $98,009 in the fifth, earnings grow 43% ($29,551). For scale, the median bachelor's field in the Scorecard file grows from $45,010 to $65,763 over the same span, so this field's early-career slope is gentler than typical.

The Pell split adds a second lens on the $68,458 year-one median: graduates who received Pell Grants earn a median of $66,591, and graduates who did not earn $77,048, a gap of $10,457. Read it as a map of where each group studied and the networks they carried in, not as the degree paying two different wages for the same work.

Inside its own CIP family, Statistics ranks 2 of 3 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $98,009. Its closest sibling is Applied Mathematics at $99,039, above this field's $98,009. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Statistics stands number 17 by five-year earnings and number 35 by first-year earnings, and number 8 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 9 places.

The debt side of the same degree

Debt first, because earnings get the headlines: $17,500 is the median federal loan balance at graduation in Statistics, pooled from 42 reporting programs. Against year-one earnings of $68,458 that balance is 26% of a year's gross pay, roughly 3.1 months of it. The standard 10-year repayment at 6.52% (the 2026-27 undergraduate Direct Loan rate) runs $199 a month and $6,366 in total interest. Your own balance and rate belong in the student loan payoff calculator; the degree-level verdict belongs in the college ROI calculator and the college major ROI calculator.

Where graduates of this field earn the most

Program medians scatter widely around the national $98,009 five-year figure. The table ranks the reporting programs by their five-year median, keeping only programs with at least 30 graduates in that count so a tiny cohort cannot top the list by luck. Carnegie Mellon University leads it at $176,087.

A median is a middle graduate, not a promise: half of Carnegie Mellon University's counted graduates earn less than $176,087. Weigh any program here against its own price using the net price estimator and the degree cost calculator.

Two more facts about the shape of this field: the five highest-paying programs in the table account for only 22.0% of the 1,626 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 $176,087 sits 80% above the national field median of $98,009. Its median debt, $19,500, runs above the field median of $17,500, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.