CNBC’s list of “colleges that pay off the most” lists U. second among private institutions

The University was listed as second among private colleges and universities on CNBC Make It’s list of “the top 50 U.S. Colleges that pay off the most,” behind only Stanford University. The University was the only school in the state of New Jersey featured on the list, which included a total of 25 public and 25 private colleges.

The ranking was calculated by deriving the “true net cost” of the various universities via graduates’ expected annual earnings.

CNBC Make It listed the average annual net cost of attending the University for a family making between $48,001 and $75,000 as $4,557. This statistic, the website notes, was calculated using data from the Hechinger Report’s Tuition Tracker, which compiles data provided by the Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

CNBC notes that this number represents “the true net cost” of attending the University, “including tuition, fees, books, supplies, and other expenses” and “after subtracting scholarships and grants.” The income bracket from $48,001 to $75,000, which contains the median U.S. household income, was chosen so as to reflect the most accurate cost for an average American.

The website lists the median salary for University alumni with zero to five years of experience as $72,700 and the median salary for alumni with over 10 years of experience as $141,300. These numbers come from PayScale’s College Salary Report, which “compiles data from an ongoing, online compensation survey of 3.2 million college graduates.”

The website averages these two salaries, noting that doing so “gives greater weight to workers’ earnings in the years immediately after college, when individuals are most impacted by college costs and student debt.” The University’s “salary average” came out to $107,000, the fourth largest average on the list, behind Stanford University, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Seven of the eight universities in the Ivy League were listed in the top 25 private colleges. Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, and Brown University ranked fifth, sixth, seventh, 13th, 17th, and 20th, respectively. Cornell University did not appear on CNBC Make It’s list.

Additionally, the average net costs of Harvard University, Yale University, and Columbia University for the selected income bracket were all greater than $6,000, and the average net costs of Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, and Brown University were all greater than $10,000, compared to the University’s total net cost of $4,557.