Colleges with the highest-paid grads

Stanford's campus is near Palo Alto, Calif.

Starting salary: $62,900
Mid-career salary: $126,400
% who think their job is meaningful: 62%

With a roster that includes former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Netflix's Reed Hastings, and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, it's no secret that Stanford has an extensive and powerful alumni network that helps its grads find jobs.

Its location in the heart of the Silicon Valley also helps. Area firms like Google, Oracle and Facebook are all major employers of the university's recent graduates.

First published March 5, 2015: 1:12 PM ET

Source: Source: PayScale.com. Data used in the College Salary Report came from surveys completed by roughly 1.4 million college graduates of 1,002 colleges and universities, which represent 75% of all bachelor's degree recipients in the U.S. Graduates with advanced degrees were excluded from the results. Only full-time, civilian workers based in the 50 states and District of Columbia were counted. The ranking is based on mid-career results, which comes from median salaries of graduates with 10 years of work experience. Whether a job is meaningful is based on the percentage of graduates who answered "Very much so" and "Yes" to the question: "Does your work make the world a better place?"

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