If you want to receive the best return on your college investment, you should consider outfitting your kids with a chic, new pocket protector for carrying engineering pencils and slide rules. According to the PayScale Salary Report, the engineering field, once again walked away with the highest paying jobs for college grads with petroleum engineers leading the pack with a $97,000 median starting salary. The next 18 jobs were also in the engineering field with a smattering of mathematics and physics related careers.

It may not come as a complete surprise that the top paying college degrees don’t correlate with the most popular college degrees, with business being the most popular. The same study shows the median starting pay for a business degree graduate coming in 59 th. While law and medical degrees generally lead to higher paying jobs, their return on investment is tempered somewhat as they do require more than double the average cost of a typical bachelor degree.