Blog · Behind the data · September 26, 2026
USC and Berkeley graduates earn the same. The price is $178,724 apart.
Here is a number I did not expect when we pulled it.
Ten years after they start, the median USC graduate earns $92,498. The median UC Berkeley graduate earns $92,446.
Fifty-two dollars apart.
The prices are not close at all. USC's full published cost of attendance is $90,300 a year. Berkeley's is $45,619. Across four years that is a gap of $178,724 — real money, the kind families borrow against a house for.
And the two schools are about equally hard to get into: 10.0% and 10.5%.
We measure payoff as ten years of median earnings minus four years of cost, in dollars rather than as a ratio. A ratio just rewards whichever school is cheapest, which tells a family nothing useful. On the subtraction, Berkeley graduates come out $741,984 ahead and USC graduates $563,780. The difference between those two numbers is almost exactly the tuition.
The caveat belongs in the same breath, because it is a real one. Median earnings travel with the students a college admits and the majors they choose at least as much as they travel with the institution. USC enrolls a different set of students than Berkeley does, into a different mix of programs. Nobody should read $92,498 as something the campus did to a graduate.
This is not an argument that USC is a worse school. It is an argument that the price and the outcome belong on the same page, where a family can see them at the same time.
Most families never get to see them that way. The admissions conversation happens in the spring and the financial-aid conversation happens after, and by then the emotional decision is already made.
Admit rates and cost of attendance from IPEDS. Earnings from the federal College Scorecard. Both schools' full numbers are on their profiles at highschoolreach.com.
