Top Ranked Programs
Samuel Merritt University is a specialized health sciences university in Oakland, California, with a program mix concentrated almost entirely in clinical and professional health fields. As a focused institution, it graduates students across 1 programs, with 1 meeting Azimuth's ranking threshold — a portfolio shaped by deep investment in nursing, occupational therapy, physician assistant studies, and related health disciplines rather than breadth across academic families. The dominant program family is Health, which defines the institution's academic identity and labor-market positioning. Nursing stands out as the program combining the largest graduate cohort with strong earnings, making it the primary driver of the institution's overall return profile. Nursing is the most popular program, graduating 508 students and delivering median earnings of $148,193 four years after enrollment; Azimuth ranks Nursing #1 for median earnings four years after enrollment among nonprofit four-year institutions. The institution's highest-earning program, Nursing, program graduates 508 students with median earnings of $148,193 four years after enrollment, and Azimuth ranks Nursing #1 for median earnings four years after enrollment among nonprofit four-year institutions. These figures reflect the strong and relatively consistent wage floors that characterize licensed clinical professions, where credentialing requirements compress the lower end of the earnings distribution. The health-sciences concentration means that most Samuel Merritt University graduates enter local-labor markets — hospitals, clinics, rehabilitation centers, and community health systems — rather than high-mobility national career tracks in technology or finance. That pattern is a feature of the program mix, not a limitation: licensed health professionals in the San Francisco Bay Area enter one of the highest-demand and highest-compensating regional labor markets in the country for clinical roles. For context on how health-sciences fields align with national workforce demand, see [supply and demand for college graduates](/analysis/supply-demand-map-college-degrees/).