PROVO, Utah — BYU law graduates receive the best financial return on their education, beating their peers around the country by a large margin.
The verified average salary of a Brigham Young University law grad is 1.7 times greater than the average grad's debt, well ahead of the three universities in second-place with a ratio of 1.4 — Texas, Yale and Houston — according to data from a student loan refinance company.
Graduates of BYU's J. Reuben Clark Law School make an average of $108,916. Their average debt is $68,873.
The next five schools in the top 10 all yield ratios of 1.3 — Georgia, Harvard, Stanford, Illinois and Connecticut.
The data was pulled from more than 60,000 student loan refinance applications analyzed by Social Finance, Inc.
SoFI verified the income and debt of each applicant and found that the return on education can vary significantly by school.
The highest average salary belonged to Cornell law grads, at $183,377, but they carried an average debt of $148,443 for a salary-to-debt ratio of 1.2.
The worst salary-to-debt ratio of 0.5 belonged to Florida Coastal and Charlotte, which are both for-profit schools owned by the same company. St. Thomas University also weights in with a 0.5 ratio. St. Thomas grads make an average of $96,357 and owe an average of 175,975.
The New York Times noted that BYU's tuition costs are exceptionally low at $12,000 per year for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which subsidizes the cost. Those who aren't Mormon pay $24,000 per year.