The average salary for a "software developer, applications" in San Francisco is about $111K a year. In San Jose, it's a bit higher, at 116K a year.

http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-developer...

The median price for a 3br house in SF is (I used zillow's numbers for this) 1.1Mil.

(btw, check the pay for the other "top 10" professions in high cost areas like SF. It does make economic sense for top students with good options to choose other fields).