The Silicon Valley Business School Elite

If you want a job working for one of the top 25 tech firms in Silicon Valley, which business school should you go to?

That’s a good question and one that is being more frequently asked by prospective business school students. At all the top schools, tech firms are grabbing a larger share of MBA graduates, competing head-to-head with the likes of more traditional and mainstream recruiters in consulting and investment banking.

A recent analysis done by UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business sheds some light on the question. Using LinkedIn data, the school examined the educational backgrounds of the senior leadership of the top 25 tech firms in Silicon Valley, a list done annually by the San Jose Mercury News. The names are familiar to everyone: Apple, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Google, Cisco, Oracle, eBay, Facebook, Adobe, Yahoo!, Intuit, Electronic Arts, and Netflix, among others.

ONE BIG SURPRISE: WHARTON, KELLOGG AND HARVARD BEAT STANFORD

The search narrowed down the alumni of business schools who held C-suite and senior-level titles at each of these top firms, including chief executives, chief financial officers, chief operating officer, vice presidents and directors. Who came out on top? Surprisingly, perhaps, it was not Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. In fact, Stanford was behind such out-of-California rivals such as Wharton, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and Harvard Business School. Of the top ten business schools, eight are either on the East Coast or in the Midwest.

If anything, the analysis also shows the inherent silliness of some of the recent rhetoric that MBAs are not wanted in the Valley. Truth is, many of them already hold senior leadership jobs at the top companies. For every Mark Zuckerberg in the valley without an MBA, there is a Tim Cook, an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business who succeeded Steve Jobs at Apple (in fact, Fuqua makes the top ten).

The winner was Berkeley’s Haas School, which performed the analysis. The school has 303 alums in leadership positions at the top 25 tech firms. Dean Richard Lyons explains that the two most important factors contributing to the school’s showing is the fact that it also has undergraduate and part-time MBA programs that give the Haas wider appeal. More obviously, he also attributes the strong showing to the school’s close proximity to the valley and the fact that Haas has routinely sent more of its graduates into technology than many other business schools. “Our physical location is a huge factor,” he notes. “Our alumni are deeply imbedded in the hiring networks of these firms.”

THE ENTREPRENEURIAL BUG TENDS TO HURT STANFORD IN THE STUDY

Stanford’s business school is somewhat disadvantaged in this analysis because it does not have either an undergraduate or part-time MBA program and because many of its graduates go the startup or venture capital route which is uncovered by the study. In fact, 18% of the Class of 2013 at Stanford launched their own companies–a percentage far beyond any other business school in the world.

It is less disadvantaged by the size of its graduating classes, which are typically just under 400, because a much larger percentage of Stanford MBAs typically enter the technology field and more of them stay in the Bay Area. Last year, for example, 32% of Stanford’s graduating MBAs went into tech and 59% stayed on the West Coast.

At Harvard, only 18% of its grads landed jobs in technology while just 16% took positions in the Bay Area. For HBS, those were record numbers. Because the analysis tracks executives in leadership positions, it’s obviously more likely to include alums who have been out of business school for several years when HBS numbers were much lower. Back in 2006, for instance, just 10% of Harvard’s class packed up and moved into the Bay Area and only 7% joined technology firms.

THE ANALYSIS EXCLUDES MAJOR TECH RECRUITERS OF MBA TALENT INCLUDING AMAZON & MICROSOFT

Still, while the larger graduating classes at Wharton, Harvard and Kellogg clearly play some role in the results, it’s also somewhat surprising that UC-Berkeley’s showing is so dominant. Haas, after all, only graduates about 240 full-time MBAs a year versus the 900+ at Harvard Business School. So it’s both undergraduates and part-time MBAs and the school’s Bay Area location that help move Haas into first place.

Of course, this is a completely Silicon Valley perspective of the tech business. It does not include such major recruiters of MBA talent as Microsoft, Amazon, Dell, or IBM. But it’s especially interesting given the boom in technology that is fueling tremendous economic growth in the Bay Area and making it a career destination for talent all over the world.

Despite those limitations, the analysis provides a compelling glimpse of elite B-school alums in key Silicon Valley jobs. Here are the top ten business schools with the most alums in leadership jobs at the top 25 Silicon Valley companies:

BUSINESS SCHOOLS WITH MOST ALUMS

IN SILICON VALLEY LEADERSHIP JOBS

 

Business School	Number Of Alumni In Leadership Positions
1. UC-Berkeley (Haas School of Business)	303
2. University of Pennsylvania (Wharton School)	259
3. Northwestern University (Kellogg School of Management)	228
4. Harvard Business School	210
5. Stanford Graduate School of Business	177
6. University of Chicago (Booth School of Business)	117
7. MIT (Sloan School of Management)	103
8. Columbia Business School	74
9, Duke University (Fuqua School of Business)	73
10. Dartmouth College (Tuck School of Business)	23

Source: LinkedIn data analysis done by UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business

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