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Don't commit to a college or major until checking it on this chart! It helps you understand the expected return on investment based on students who graduated from that school with that major.

The Foundation on Research for Equal Opportunity (FREOPP) has compiled data from four different research organizations as well as their own to calculate the return on investment (ROI) for more than 30,000 majors. As a result, a student can now look up a major at any given school to see what they can expect to make (on average) based on what other students who have graduated from that school with that major are making. This data helps students decide whether a program is worth their investment or if there might be other programs that would be a better investment.

FREOPP's study found that twenty-five percent of majors have a negative return on investment, meaning a graduate will make less throughout their lifetime than a student with only a high school diploma. However, they also found that ten percent of programs have greater than one million dollars or more return on investment. This chart below is an easy-to-read representation of FREOPP's findings.

The easiest way to use this chart is to search for either your major, state, or college. Within that search, you can then organize the data based on one of the columns. It's as easy as that!

Two other great resources to use to corroborate the data about majors from different colleges and income are Collegescorecard.gov and Payscale.com.

Unsure which to choose?