One of the most important factors attracting droves of professionals towards an MBA degree is undoubtedly the fabulous salaries and bonuses on offer. Let’s have a look at the highest you could hope to earn as well as at the very bottom of the scale.
Well, it’s on record that an MBA graduate from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania managed to net a salary package of $350,000 in the year 2018. Harvard Business School and Stanford Graduate School of Business came next with students earning a domestic salary package of $300,000 each, according to a Poets & Quants analysis.
Meanwhile, the highest salary for an international student was $308,000 with the Colombia Business School grabbing the honours.
- The highest MBA salary the Class of 2018 at the top 25 US B-schools went to a graduate of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania at $350,000
- The highest salary for an international student was $308,000 at the Colombia Business School
- Wharton also topped in sign on bonus for both domestic ($250,000) and foreign nationals ($150,000). The highest domestic average salary was at Stanford at $150,123
- The highest salaries tended to be in the Northeast, that is New York and others, or the West Coast, the Silicon Valley.
- The lowest reported salary for a U.S. MBA in the Class of 2018 was at Harvard, where someone took a job for the base pay of $41,875. For an international student, the lowest base pay was a Wharton student accepting $15,910 outside the US.
Wharton also topped in sign on bonus for both domestic ($250,000) and foreign nationals ($150,000). However, the highest domestic average salary was at Stanford, where the graduates reported a base salary of $150,123. The school with the highest average pay for international graduates was HBS at $136,194.
The analysis of salaries in the top 25 schools also showed that the overall U.S. average of the 25 schools was about $7,000 more than the average for foreign national grads at $127,603 to $120,589. Looking only at the top 10 schools, the U.S. was about $8,000 ahead at $135,620 to internationals’ $127,674.
High Earners Get Still More After MBA
If you have been earning a tidy packet working in the Finance domain, in hedge funds, private equity and venture capital firms, you could hope to earn considerably more post MBA. The highest salaries tend to be in the Northeast, that is New York and others, or the West Coast, the Silicon Valley.
As many as 220 of the 633 job-seekers in Wharton’s Class of 2018 accepted positions in the Northeast. Stanford’s top salary earner at $300,000 in Finance found a job in the west. About 153 graduates of GSB stayed in the West for work, more than half of those known to be seeking work in that graduating class.
The highest number of job seekers
A very high section of students, 94.5% at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, that translates to 86 students out of 91 reported that they were looking for work. MIT Sloan had 91.9% and UC-Berkeley Haas 90.8%.
Stanford had the lowest percentage of salary reporters: 74.1%, or 218 grads out of 294. This was probably because of the fact that the school is known for nurturing entrepreneurship in the form of startups. Incidentally, the school also had the lowest percentage reporting bonuses among the top 25 at 40.8%. The University of Virginia Darden School of Business, at 82.0%, with the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business close behind at 79.7%.
The Low Earners
The lowest reported salary for a U.S. MBA in the Class of 2018 was at Harvard, where someone took a job for the base pay of $41,875. For an international student, the lowest base pay was a Wharton student accepting $15,910 outside the US.
A graduate from UCLA Anderson reported the lowest sign-on bonus at $1598 for international students while that of US student was just $40.
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Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business reported the lowest high U.S. salary ($150K), lowest average U.S. salary ($111,640), lowest high U.S. sign-on ($58,500), lowest high foreign salary ($145K) and lowest high foreign sign-on ($35K).
Their $99,108 average foreign salary was the only non-six-figure salary for any top-25 school in either the U.S. or foreign column.
The highest low U.S. salary was at Dartmouth Tuck ($87K), though four schools — Northwestern Kellogg, USC Marshall, Michigan Ross, and NYU Stern — were close behind at $80K. USC claimed the highest low foreign salary at $90K. Emory Goizueta ($8K) had the highest low U.S. sign-on and Virginia Darden and Georgetown McDonough ($10K) shared the distinction of reporting the highest low foreign sign-on.
