An MIT graduate displays some inspiration on his cap. Massachusetts is the perennial leader for Education and Technology & Innovation.

As decision day approaches for high-school seniors, students and their families will have to figure out which college is worth their money.

Compensation data company PayScale crunched the numbers to come up with its own answers based on a school's return on investment. PayScale calculated ROI as the difference between the 20-year median salary of a graduate who earned a bachelor's degree based on data from 1.3 million people the company surveyed online minus the college's four-year, on-campus cost without financial aid from the Department of Education.

Ivy League schools did not top PayScale's ROI ranking. Instead, colleges that specialize in engineering dominated the list. The average ROI for engineering schools was $653,000 compared with less than $157,000 for liberal arts colleges.

"The intent of the list is not to say that everyone should go to school to become an engineer because that has the highest return on investment," said Lydia Frank, PayScale's vice president of content strategy. "It's really to show that students need to be thoughtful about how they will fund their education."

Last year, 42.4 million Americans owed $1.3 trillion in federal student loans. "Most high school seniors don't have perspective on how much they will make after they graduate college," Frank said. "You don't want to be a library sciences major with a $100,000 in student loan debt."

PayScale reviewed 521 public universities and 901 private colleges for its full ranking. Here are the top 5 colleges based on their 20-year return on investment. For state schools, the numbers in the summaries are for in-state students.