Profession Comparisons — PA vs NP, SWE vs DS, CPA vs CMA, MBA vs PMP.
Side-by-side comparisons of two real career paths — PA vs NP, software engineer vs data scientist, CPA vs CMA, MBA vs PMP. Each page maps your priorities (income, autonomy, time-to-credential, geographic flexibility) to which profession scores higher on each dimension.
PA vs NP: Salary, Authority, School, Decision
State-by-state practice authority map (huge variance) + real take-home cross-state + program length/cost/admit-rate table + specialty entry points
→Software Engineer vs Data Scientist: Salary, Path, Switch
Levels.fyi-grade real total-comp by level (not Glassdoor self-report bias) + O*NET-grounded daily task percentage breakdown + asymmetric switching difficulty (SWE→DS easier than DS→SWE) + industry premium analysis (DS in non-tech significantly underpays vs SWE)
→CPA vs CMA: Career Path, Salary, Exam Decision
Neutral third-party (every other ranking page is exam-prep vendor marketing) + 7-scenario decision table + true cost-to-pass math + dual-cert career math + exam-difficulty deconstruction (depth vs breadth, not 'easier')
→MBA vs PMP: Cost, ROI, Career Decision
Extreme ROI contrast ($80-220K MBA + 18-24mo vs $1-2.5K PMP + 8-14wk) + 7-scenario decision table + combo-order strategy (PMP first then MBA) + MSPM ($30-60K) third option
→Every “A vs B” result on the public web has the same problem: the publisher is selling something. Bootcamps grade software-engineer routes against the data-science route they happen to teach. Exam-prep vendors grade CPA against CMA based on which exam they sell. The first thing a useful comparison needs to do is declare its incentives, and the second is to publish the numbers underneath the verdict so anyone can reweight them.
Federal data on both sides, not just the side being sold
BLS Occupational Employment Statistics covers both occupations in every comparison on this site. We pull the same five percentiles (P10/P25/P50/P75/P90) for each role and the same year-over-year employment projection, so the salary delta line in any compare page is a like-for-like federal-data comparison — not the source occupation’s P25 against the target’s P75 (a common bootcamp framing).
School cost as full opportunity cost, not sticker price
Every comparison includes time-to-credential, tuition, and forgone wages during the program window. A two-year MBA against a one-year master’s in data analytics has different opportunity costs even if both quote a $100K total tuition. The sticker price comparison favors the shorter program; the full opportunity-cost view sometimes flips the result.
State authority and licensure mapped explicitly
For licensed professions (PA vs NP, CPA vs CMA, RN vs MD), the practice-authority footprint differs by state. A nurse practitioner has full practice authority in 27 states and supervised practice in the rest; a physician assistant operates under collaborative agreement in nearly every state. A bare salary comparison hides this. Compare pages on DeepComps include state-by-state authority context next to the wage data.
The decision matrix at the bottom of each compare page lets readers weight the six dimensions (income, real wage, time-to-credential, admission difficulty, growth, day-to-day work) according to their priorities. We don’t publish a single “A wins” verdict because the right answer depends on which dimensions the reader cares about — and every reader is different.
Every compare page asks the same six questions, in the same order.
- Salary delta + real-wage delta (BLS + BEA RPP).
- School / cert cost + time-to-credential.
- Admission or exam difficulty + acceptance rate.
- State-by-state practice authority or scope.
- Job-market growth (BLS projection).
- Day-to-day work content (O*NET task statements).
A decision matrix at the bottom of each page maps your priorities to a recommended path — you decide the weights.
- Why these 4 comparisons?
High-search decisions affecting six-figure career trajectories, currently dominated by bootcamp / exam-prep vendors with obvious selling pressure.
- Can I see the underlying numbers?
Yes — every comparison links to its underlying job/license/transition pages, and the source list links to BLS / BEA / professional-board data feeds.
- Are these recommendations?
Not in the “X is better than Y” sense. Each page maps career priorities (income, autonomy, time-to-credential, geographic flexibility) to which path scores higher on each dimension.