Despite California’s economic trials and tribulations of the last couple of years, going to school there and becoming an engineering major can really thousands of dollars difference in salary per year for college graduates.

PayScale.com released a report Thursday revealing that petroleum engineering majors and graduates of Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California are bringing home the most bacon. Mid-career salaries were shown to have fallen 1.5% between 2009 and 2010, but in the long run, engineers, scientists, and mathematicians continue to make bank.

“Our society values something practical…that’s why poetry isn’t popping up on the top of the list,” said Al Lee, director of quantitative analysis at PayScale.

Data collection from 999 bachelor degree institutions during the last year regarding median starting salaries of employees who graduated within the last five years as well as median mid-career salaries of graduates with more than 10 years of experience in his or her field revealed these interesting conclusions.

So back to those at the top of the list, Harvey Mudd graduates in the sciences, who on average, earn a mid-level salary of around $126,000.

“Harvey Mudd is the nexus of all good places to be in terms of graduate earnings,” said Lee. “Not only do engineering majors make good money and this happens to be a specialized school for engineering, but southern California is an area that tends to have some of the highest wage earners in the country.”

Meanwhile, the former school with the highest paid graduates, Dartmouth College, fell to number two on the list, only to tie with Princeton, at a mid-career salary of $123,000…still nothing to sneer at.

At the opposite end of the pay scale sits Coker College in South Caroline, with a starting salary average of $28,900 and a mid-level salary of $40,300.

As far as individual degrees go, petroleum engineers take the top of the list at a starting salary of $93,000 and a mid-level salary of $157,000; about $49,000 ahead of the next most profitable major, aerospace engineering and chemical engineering.

“Petroleum engineering has been an incredibly profitable sector for the last few years,” said Lee. “It’s a very cyclical field and depends largely on the price of oil, and we’re very much on an up cycle right now.”

Electrical engineering was the third-highest paying major on the list, followed by nuclear engineering, applied mathematics, biomedical engineering, physics, and computer engineering.