As Jumbos cross the stage to receive their diplomas today, they'll be leaving a world where their annual expenditure is around $45,000 for a world where they start negotiating their annual incomes - and for the lucky ones, that might match the cost of year's tuition at Tufts.
According to career information Web site Vault.com, seven of the top 10 starting salaries will go to engineers, whose average starting salaries will be between $45,000 and $50,000. Others will make much less, struggling to get their feet in the door with low-paying entry-level positions.
But wherever graduating Jumbos may fall on the income spectrum, they may have no need to worry. Recent research suggests money and happiness may not be as related as some people think.
The relationship between money and happiness has led to many conflicting findings, but there is no question that the two are related in complicated ways. A recent article in Scientific American Mind explored the different factors that influence happiness - and money, they found, was not a significant one.
One researcher found that the buying power of Americans has increased threefold since 1957, but happiness levels have stayed the same: About one-third of American adults report that they are "very happy."
According to psychology professor David Harder, though, money has little influence on happiness with one catch - people must have enough to cover their most basic needs.
"The general gist of the literature is that a sufficient amount of money to not constantly worry about meeting basic housing, food, medical, and educational costs is enough for most people to feel happy with how much they make," he said in an e-mail to the Daily. "[A person's] general 'happiness' after [covering basic needs] is much more correlated to positive and intimate relationships and other quality of life variables than to money."
Senior Kyle Bradbury echoed these feelings.
"College helps meet that minimum standard, and your level of happiness depends on the people around you," Bradbury said. "It depends on what you give to the people around you - if you bring happiness to others, you'll get happiness back."
In fact, one of the factors that researchers believe determines happiness is volunteerism. According to the article in Scientific American Mind, people who volunteer tend to be happier.
So do Jumbos pursue money or happiness in their choice of a college major? Students interviewed had a variety of opinions.
"Some of my friends are pursuing careers for financial reasons, and some of my friends are pursuing careers in things they really like, so I think at Tufts it's pretty split," senior Dan Sullivan said.
Bradbury agreed.
"I would say it's divided," he said. "I've met a lot of people who've done their major for the money, but I've also seen so many people who've also done it for their passion. I think that Tufts helps encourage people to explore what their passion is and worry about the money later."
For some students, the change from relying on parents to relying on their own incomes is what makes them worry about their financial prospects.
"I haven't heard many people talk about going into a career for money, but I have heard comments about getting a job after graduation and how much it makes, where they can live, how they can live," senior Kacie Nakamura said. "They worry that the job won't bring them enough money to live as they want to."
According to Harder, expectations do affect one's happiness about money. "[If] a person has very high expectations about money availability - for example, being raised in a privileged background - and then reality is much lower than that, there seems to be some resulting unhappiness," he said.
For Sullivan, being a starving graduate student for a few years might bring more happiness than not.
"I think that [five years of graduate school] will make me happier - in a way, I see it as almost delaying the real world. Financially I won't be as well off as some of my friends, but I'll be in college for five more years," he said.
Nakamura agreed. "I think [graduate school] will make me feel happy," she said. "I am actually excited to start a master's program in nutrition, although in terms of money it won't bring me a lot. After that I am hoping to go into nursing, and that will bring money, but I didn't choose a career based on the salary."
Bradbury, an electrical engineer, explained that the financial benefits of his trade were an extra perk rather than a motivating factor.
"Initially [I chose electrical engineering] due to pure interest, but as I went into the program and encountered more and more people, and found out that it was a fairly secure position in terms of finances, it certainly gave me the inspiration to stay," he said.
And as far as the psychological research goes, seniors who know what to expect will end up happy.
"Most people who earn consistently with what they expect experience their lives as pretty happy, whether they're from the lower middle class or the upper class," Harder said.
