How A Dean Would Rank Business Schools

The outputs suggested by Dean Hubbard are more commonly known and a key part of U.S. News’ methodology. They include average starting salary and bonus (with the numbers reflecting the percentage of graduates who receive bonuses). While these numbers reflect the quality of a school’s output and what the market is willing to pay for it, they also reflect industry preferences and cost-of-living in different locales. The top three in average salary and bonus last year were Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Wharton and Tuck.

The real surprises in the data come just a bit later. Consider this face: Graduates of the University of Michigan’s Ross School made slightly more out of the gate than MBAs at Columbia or Chicago Booth, despite the latter school’s greater exposure to high paying finance jobs in New York and Chicago.

Schools Ranked By Average Salary & Bonus

School	2014 P&Q Rank	2014 Average Salary & Bonus
1. Harvard Business School	2	$144,750
2. MIT (Sloan)	7	$142,936
3. Stanford Graduate School of Business	1	$142,834
4. University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)	3	$142,574
5. Dartmouth College (Tuck)	8	$142,489
6. UC-Berkeley (Haas)	10	$140,935
7. University of Michigan (Ross)	11	$140,497
8. Columbia Business School	5	$139,006
9. University of Chicago (Booth)	4	$137,615
10. Duke University (Fuqua)	9	$137,154
11. University of Virginia (Darden)	13	$136,474
12. Northwestern University (Kellogg)	6	$136,357
13. New York University (Stern)	16	$135,933
14. Cornell University (Johnson)	15	$132,316
15. Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper)	17	$131,865
16. Emory University (Goizueta)	20	$128,347
17. UCLA (Anderson)	14	$127,535
18. Yale School of Management	12	$126,871
19. University of Texas-Austin (McCombs)	19	$126,160
20. University of Washington (Foster)	23	$125,367
21. University of North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler)	18	$124,641
22. Indiana University (Kelley)	20	$119,581
23. Georgetown University (McDonough)	22	$118,938
24. Vanderbilt University (Owen)	25	$113,830
25. Washington University (Olin)	24	$111,974

Source: P&Q analysis of business school data supplied to U.S. New & World Report

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