You Can Learn To Love The Smell Of Gas

At an average starting salary of $96,200, petroleum engineering is far and away the highest-paid major for Class of 2013 college graduates. Obviously, a petroleum engineer is not the guy who pumps your gas.

While some Class of 2013 college grads are still sending their resumes off in hopes of landing a real job, engineers not only find jobs, but they pull pretty decent starting salaries. What experts call the “lowest average starting salary” goes to the civil engineer whose yearly paycheck clocks in at $55,600, while the “high” goes to computer engineers who pocket an average $66,900 their first year on the job.

And in case you’re still in college and there’s time to change majors, petroleum engineers design methods for extracting oil and gas from new and old wells. Typically, they have a bachelor’s degree, and a cooperative education program is part of their training. Their starting salary ranges from $76,100 to $113,000 the first year out of the classroom. The number of positions for these high-value gas jockeys is expected to grow by 17 percent. Oil prices drive job growth, so rising prices at the pump spell good news for petroleum engineers.