SoFi Blog

by Bea Bischoff

It’s that time again: SoFi’s “No BS” Return on Education 2018 MBA rankings are here. Each year, we mine the data from student loan refinancing applications to figure out which MBA programs offer the best return on investment.

If you’re in the process of applying for an MBA or think that an MBA might be in your future, read on. This data tells you more than which school has the best marketing department; it shows you which MBA programs are most likely to lead to a high salary—or a future with a great salary-to-debt ratio.

It’s well documented that student loans are a big source of stress among graduates. For those carrying the 1.34 trillion dollars in student loan debt currently totaled in the U.S., the burden causes strain in ways you might be able to predict—loss of sleep, anxiety—and in some ways that are surprising.

According to a recent SoFi member survey of over 1,200 respondents with student loan debt, the lion’s share of respondents confirmed how student loan stress impacts mental health. Eighty three percent shared that they’ve felt like they couldn’t relax due to the burden of the debt, and a full fifty percent felt that dealing with student loan debt has caused them to feel depressed. Over a third of respondents have reported actually losing sleep due to student loan debt, and a large number noted that it’s caused them to miss out on opportunities to travel, promote self care, and make major life decisions.

Data insights provided by the Analytics Team at SoFi

Today’s post is all about how men and women* compare in our student loan refinancing data set. What we found? Both men and women have high student debt loads. (Not a revelation.) Men also get paid more than women on average. (Also not a revelation.)

But here’s what’s interesting: Despite the fact that women have as much student debt and make less money than men, women in the SoFi data set pay their debt off more quickly than men—by nearly 10% (9.3% exactly).

There are lots of good reasons to become a doctor. Being a physician means you can help people in one of the most direct ways possible: By doing your best to restore their health. An added bonus is you can eventually make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year doing it; Medscape’s 2016 physician compensation report found that the lowest-earning doctors (pediatricians and endocrinologists) bring in around $200,000 a year, while the highest earners (orthopedists and cardiologists) make over $400,000.

If you just graduated from nursing school, personal finance is probably the last thing on your mind. You’ve burned the midnight oil memorizing medical terms that sound like a foreign language. You’ve put in rough clinical hours dealing with trying patients. You’re cramming for the NCLEX. And you’re ready to get out there and just do the job.

You might be thinking, “I went to school for a solid career, so the money will take care of itself.” Nurses do make pretty good salaries—you’re not wrong about that. In 2016, on average nurse practitioner made nearly $105,000 a year, registered nurses made more than $72,000, and practical and vocational nurses made $44,000. Demand for nurses of all stripes is growing, with the number of positions expected to increase between 16 and 31%, depending on the role, in the decade through 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.