4. Colgate University

Being located in upstate New York, Colgate's grads often end up working in New York City or Boston, where there are a lot of high-paying jobs. Helping them to get a leg up is a tight alumni network with a big presence in lucrative fields such as finance and business.

At least 150 alumni work at IBM, J.P. Morgan and Google combined, the school claims. The starting salary of graduates here is $54,000 which makes the mid-year salary as $126,600.

5. Stanford University

With a list that includes former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Netflix's Reed Hastings, and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. It's no more a secret that Stanford has an extensive and powerful alumni network that helps its grads find jobs.

Its location in the heart of the Silicon Valley also helps. Area firms like Google, Oracle and Facebook are all major employers of the university's recent graduates. Here the starting salary for the employees is $62,900 which makes the mid-year salary as $ $126,400.