Forget US News's academic rankings and Playboy's party-school list, writes Catherine Rampell for The New York Times. For some prospective college freshmen, the important question is: will I make more money if I go to Harvard, or if I go to Harvey Mudd? Last week PayScale, a site that collects data on salaries for different professions, released an updated, gigantic data set on the salaries of graduates from hundreds of universities and colleges, as well as salaries and career choices broken down by department and major.

The numbers are from 1.2 million users of PayScale's site who self-reported their salaries and educational credentials in a PayScale survey over the last year. While the data are not from a randomised scientific sample, they are still pretty tantalising. For example, there are rankings by median mid-career salary (minimum 10 years out of school) by university.
Full report on The New York Times site

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