The B-School Class of 2015: By The Numbers

And what about the makeup of the Class of 2015? At every Top ten school, the largest chunk of incoming students continue to come from financial services. Columbia Business School leads here with 40% of its first-year MBAs with financial backgrounds, including real estate. Wharton follows closely with 39% and then there’s a sizable drop off until you come to Harvard Business School with 31%. The biggest surprise in the numbers? Only 26% of the incoming MBA students at Chicago Booth, for many years known more as a finance school, have worked in finance. That is the tied for the lowest of any Top ten school with Kellogg.

Some schools provide more detailed breakdowns on their incoming students. Harvard, for example, leads in nabbing the most MBAs with private equity and venture capital experience (18%). That compares with 17% at Stanford, and 12% at Wharton. Columbia Business School reports that 7% of its incoming MBA students boast PE work experience.

Columbia, meantime, has the largest contingent of consultants in its new MBA class: 29%. That’s above Tuck (25%), Kellogg (24%), and Haas 22%). Harvard has the lowest percentage–just 19%, surprisingly low given the demand for MBAs from the big global consulting giants.

Portrait Of The Class of 2015 — Industry Backgrounds

2013 P&Q Rank & School	Consulting	Finance	CPG/Retail	Tech	Govt/Military/Non-Profit	Healthcare/Biotech
1. Harvard	19%	31%	6%	11%	12%	6%
2. Stanford	20%	27%	11%	12%	13%	5%
3. Chicago	20%	26%	6%	6%	11%	3%
4. Wharton	20%	39%	10%	6%	11%	NA
5. Kellogg	24%	26%	8%	6%	7%	3%
6. MIT (Sloan)	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA
7. Columbia	29%	40%	11%	4%	10%	3%
8. Dartmouth (Tuck)	25%	27%	13%	9%	16%	4%
9. Berkeley (Haas)	22%	30%	6%	8%	12%	5%
10. Duke (Fuqua)	18%	21%	3%	4%	13%	6%

Source: Schools

Notes: An asterisk is an estimate

Portrait Of The Class of 2015 — Undergraduate Backgrounds

2013 P&Q Rank & School	Econ/Biz	STEM	Humanities/Social Science
1. Harvard	44%	38%	6%
2. Stanford	14%	35%	51%
3. Chicago	55%	21%	14%
4. Wharton	25%	25%	44%
5. Kellogg	46%	30%	22%
6. MIT (Sloan)	30%	51%	19%
7. Columbia	29%	25%	44%
8. Dartmouth (Tuck)	41%	30%	26%
9. Berkeley (Haas)	43%	25%	24%
10. Duke (Fuqua)	47%	33%	18%

Source: Schools

Notes: An asterisk is an estimate