What was your starting salary after college?

Got a BS in Mechanical Engineering and managed to land my job while still in school (had 2 months left), downside is the position was for a job in the midwest (I was in NY). My starting salary was about 54K within 2 months I received a market adjustment that bumped me up to 56K after a year I got a pay grade bump and I'm riding at 60K with A LOT of OT. Planning on making as much as possible to get rid of these loans and bouncing out of here.

oblock (word to chief keef)
 
I plan on changing jobs when in graduate in August

2 years of corporate finance experience might not be enough...

But I'm hoping this ms in finance from a very non target will serve as an additional 2 years of experience.

Think I can get in the 85-100k range?

Just curious. I have dreams of starting my own thing up Very soon... But I'm always trying to have a plan b and C on deck in life.

Plus I want to move from Dallas
 
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Gonna be broke for a while after college...

Just finished an unpaid full-time internship at a sports radio station here in KC...starting part-time on Monday...hoping to get full-time this Summer and I'm guessing the starting amount is around 30K.
 
USABasketball08 said:
Is an Economics degree not marketable? I see people in here with that degree not even touching 40K which is surprising.

At my school even the lower-level Econ classes are all quantitative and more technical, rather than the conceptual stuff you see at some schools. :lol:
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To be honest with you, I didn't really care about Econ and had/have no interest in pursuing a career in it :lol: I went with it because I was running out of time to declare a major and wanted to finish a degree in four years. Also, couldn't get into the business school with my GPA so Econ seemed like the next best thing. Three years after graduating and a handful of dead-end jobs, I'm at 50k working as a govt contractor. And it took a "colorful" resume to even land the interview... My actual job experience and skill set is all over the place which is a good and bad thing.
 
s0leFUNK said:
To be honest with you, I didn't really care about Econ and had/have no interest in pursuing a career in it :lol: I went with it because I was running out of time to declare a major and wanted to finish a degree in four years. Also, couldn't get into the business school with my GPA so Econ seemed like the next best thing. Three years after graduating and a handful of dead-end jobs, I'm at 50k working as a govt contractor. And it took a "colorful" resume to even land the interview... My actual job experience and skill set is all over the place which is a good and bad thing.
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Ah I get it. Glad to see you came up. :pimp:

I know at some schools, Econ is actually in the business department.
 
Graduated in '06 with an associate's degree in criminal justice from local county college. Got in law enforcement, starting pay 45k. 7 years later im @ top pay of 96k, last year i made 140k with overtime
 
WhatCanISay said:
Govt work is usually lower from what I hear, but the benefits are good. A mechanical engineer with 25 years of experience was only making 95k at a govt. position as an assistant municipal engineer.

If you're really looking for money, a consulting firm would be better. OT is usually really good.
But whatever makes you happy is what always matters.
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Yeah my friends were making like 52-55 with less benefits. Govt work sucks in general but you can fly up the payscale pretty fast if you have your pe. Then again I couldn't stand working there so the money potential couldn't keep me
 
RaySweatShirt said:
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nah man but 50-70k from BS degrees straight from college......nah. I'm in school for Registered Nursing and I just can't see how someone with a non-paying degree w/ no experience will start off making the same or more than what I will.
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Believe it man, the average starting salary for Computer Science majors in the DMV area is 65k-70k, but not everyone has said whether or not they had internship experience before graduating. Internships make a big difference.
 
double tap said:
Graduated in '06 with an associate's degree in criminal justice from local county college. Got in law enforcement, starting pay 45k. 7 years later im @ top pay of 96k, last year i made 140k with overtime
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What exactly you do if you don't mind answering
 
monstar said:
The undergrad school you attend is not a barrier you just have to hustle that much harder. Getting an internship is key. If you don't mind me asking where are u planning to attend?

Not all investment banks are on wall street also. So you may not go to one of the well knowns but getting your foot in the door is key. I have friends at BMo in Chicago whom have got great experience as well as at a few other boutique firms.

It's all about having a plan and executing bro. You can do it
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Thanks man. I'm attending Rutgers and supposedly there are great connections to NYU, which would be great grad school in terms of breaking into the market. I'm going to do a lot of research so I can execute this correctly.
 
RUNYC said:
I agree 100%, I didn't go to a target school (albeit, after I graduated there is now some OCR for IB) and took advantage of every opportunity I had to be noticed for interviews. Once you get a "brand name" on your resume, most recruiters will see that as a stamp of approval and not focus as much on what school you go to. There are also a number of other ways to "break-in" from non-target backgrounds; I'm not sure of your ethnicity, but a lot of banks have diversity office visits to meet candidates and as someone mentioned on a previous page, Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO) is a diversity internship program which offers Wall Street front-office internship opportunities to minorities. 

After my first year as an Analyst, I helped with the diversity office visit for my firm and it was a great feeder program for the SA program; my group had two SA's who did the program and both got offers. 

Regarding post-MBA Associates, I would actually disagree that they are more "in favor". Analyst programs are typically structured as 2-year programs with a 1 year "promotion" to a third year Analyst, where by the end of those 2-3 years, most have left for PE / HF / VC, start-ups, corporate or go back to school. Since most decide to leave after 2-3 years, very few decide to stay on to be directly promoted as Associates ("A to A" promotion). Most banks would prefer for Analysts to stay on to be promoted; less need for on campus MBA recruiting, already "vetted" by the firm, have the skill set to do well after being an Analyst for 2-3 years, and already have a good rapport with their group.

Although you would be paid more as an Associate than Analyst; there are a number of benefits of starting off as an Analyst, if you can, (i) the Associate position is seen as "career track" whereby it's much more difficult to leave for PE/HF, etc. (ii) if after 2-3 years of being an Analyst you want to stay on, most firms would prefer to promote you than have you leave, (iii) you forgo the tremendous amount of B-School debt and (iv) you build a much more robust set of technical skills as an analyst, there were some post-MBA Associates who couldn't build a three statement model |I  

Lastly, I was grabbing drinks yesterday with a friend who is an Associate at a large BB (A to A promote), and he mentioned to me that they were trying out a new structure of hiring a class of "junior analysts" which would be paid less, likely come from non-target backgrounds and only have a one year contract. There are a number of reasons why I'm against the general idea, but this seems like an opportunity for non-target students to break-in and work hard to ultimately be asked to stay on for more than a year.  
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Interesting, I will surely take advantages of all the opportunities that the college presents to me. But quick questions, how was the first year as an analysts? Were the hours as grueling or hard as hyped? Also in terms of the MBA or no MBA argument, that makes sense. I want to work at a hedgefund and I have read that hedgefunds do look for experience that is of course unless I somehow got lucky and received a job offer out of undergrad.
 
krisboyz781 said:
Interesting, I will surely take advantages of all the opportunities that the college presents to me. But quick questions, how was the first year as an analysts? Were the hours as grueling or hard as hyped?
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I have a few friends in their first year right now and they're miserable.

A good hs friend already accepted an offer to join a major PE fund (and he's not even done with his first year yet).
 
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Got my BA in Marketing. My job is in IT/Operations. Making $60k plus Overtime/differential. Graduated exactly 1 year ago.
 
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thaSOLEful1 said:
What exactly you do if you don't mind answering
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County corrections officer in central NJ. My dept has a ridiculous amount of overtime. Freeholders would rather pay us overtime than hire new people giving them benefits, pensions, etc. Ill have the option to retire @ 45yrs old with 65% pension + benefits. A NJ law enforcement career is the way to go
 
double tap said:
County corrections officer in central NJ. My dept has a ridiculous amount of overtime. Freeholders would rather pay us overtime than hire new people giving them benefits, pensions, etc. Ill have the option to retire @ 45yrs old with 65% pension + benefits. A NJ law enforcement career is the way to go
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I hope you don't bank on that pension as your sole retirement income. Public sector pensions will be a thing of the past in 15 years. There's simply not enough money coming in to continue to support these pensions. Hence all the municipal bankruptcy protection going on in several cities across the country. 
 
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Chopper said:
I hope you don't bank on that pension as your sole retirement income. Public sector pensions will be a thing of the past in 15 years. There's simply not enough money coming in to continue to support these pensions. Hence all the municipal bankruptcy protection going on in several cities across the country. 
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Fareal...

I would hope that he's smart enough to retire before things get really bad though...

But man... A municipal bankruptcy is a bit far fetched... Those are quite rare... Especially in big cities.




Nobody gonna answer my question though ?

:smh:
 
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Graduated Dec 13 with a degree in communications minor in business. Had no prior experience or networking in college so I managed to land an unpaid internship with The Source magazine. Been there for almost 3 months and still havent had any luck finding a full time gig..This sucks
 
bxbadboy90 said:
Graduated Dec 13 with a degree in communications minor in business. Had no prior experience or networking in college so I managed to land an unpaid internship with The Source magazine. Been there for almost 3 months and still havent had any luck finding a full time gig..This sucks
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i feel your pain man, communications seems to be tough right now. I graduated in 2011 and had been working at a grocery store making $16.45/hr with great benefits but wasn't happy at all because it obviously wasnt something i went to college for. been trying to get into sports pr/coms for a while having done internships, etc. in college and while working at the grocery store and 3 years later finally landed an internship in florida (im from Cali) for USLPRO soccer league. Its a huge gamble but its at least a step in the right direction, wont be making nearly as much as I did at the store and it only last four months :\
 
heirjordan15 said:
girlslovewaffles said:
Internships in college is so crucial. I wish they stressed this more in high school.

That being said, I start med school in August, so I won't be getting a salary for awhile. Maybe anti-salary (debt) :lol: .

As for side hustles, I have some side businesses. Currently looking into investing in an avocado farm with some friends :pimp:
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just curious, where is the farm and could you go into a little more detail if possible? thanks
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I'm in SoCal, and we've been looking at farms in Temecula. Honestly, I JUST got put on this, so I don't know much. But I've been looking at some of the financial analysis on the profitability of avocado farms, and it looks like a really nice investment.

Of course, this only applies if you're in SoCal. I don't even think you can grow avocados outside of SoCal :lol:
 
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