Even low-ranked colleges can be a ticket to six figures: Graduates earn $100K+ a decade later—more than twice as much as high school grads | Fortune

As the new school year gets well underway, Gen Z is once again facing a daunting question: Is the degree they’re pursuing actually going to be worth it? A new ranking of America’s top 500 colleges is offering a helpful insight: they don’t necessarily need an elite name on their diploma to land a six-figure salary.

The list, compiled by Forbes, is unsurprisingly dominated at the top by Ivy League-level institutions like MIT, Princeton and Harvard, where graduates are expected to earn median salaries of more than $120,000 a decade after receiving their diploma. Graduates of the University of Pennsylvania, ranked No. 5, come out even higher, with median 10-year earnings of $151,328.

But the more surprising finding comes at the other end of the list: Most of the lowest-ranked schools put six-figure salaries well within reach.

Marietta College, a private liberal arts college in rural Ohio ranked No. 500, has median 10-year earnings of $105,837.

In fact, nearly every school on the list has median earnings of over $90,000, meaning the earnings gap between a prestigious college and those lesser-known can be considerably narrower than students might expect.