Big Jump In Tech Hires At Kellogg

Only four business schools’ graduates landed higher base salaries this year: Harvard, Stanford, Wharton and MIT Sloan. Kellogg’s median salary at $120,000 matched the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, even though Chicago places far more students in the generally more lucrative finance sector. Sign-on bonuses of $25,000 are generally standard throughout the top-tier schools. Where Kellogg tends to lose out a bit is in year-end other guaranteed compensation, a bigger factor among financial firms (see below table).

How Kellogg’s Class of 2014 Compares

With Other Top Business Schools

 

School Median Base Sign-on Bonus Other Bonus Jackpot Graduation Offers Offers 3 Months Later
Harvard $125,000 $25,000 $34,700 $184,700 88% 93%
Stanford $125,000 $25,000 $31,500 $181,500 80% 94%
Wharton $125,000 $25,000 $27,000 $177,000 88% 98%
MIT Sloan $124,400 $25,000 $20,000 $169,400 85.9% 94.6%
Kellogg $120,000 $25,000 —— $145,000 85.0% 94.0%
Chicago $120,000 $25,000 $26,000 $171,000 89.8% 98.0%
Columbia $119,400 $25,000 $22,390 $166,790 83% 97%
Dartmouth (Tuck) $116,000 $25,000 $25,000 $166,000 91% 98%
Michigan (Ross) $115,000 $25,000 $16,750 $156,750 89% 93%
Duke (Fuqua) $111,000 $25,000 $15,000 $151,000 87% 94%
Yale $110,000 NA $35,000 $145,000 80% 93%
New York (Stern) $110,000 $30,000 $20,000 $160,000 81% 94%
UCLA (Anderson) $110,000 $25,000 $15,000 $150,000 75% 90%
Virginia (Darden) $110,000 $25,000 $9,500 $144,500 89% 94%
Cornell (Johnson) $106,000 $25,000 $12,500 $143,500 87% 92%
UNC (Kenan-Flagler) $100,000 $25,000 $16,625 $141,625 81% 92%
Texas-Austin (McCombs) $105,000 $25,000 $12,600 $142,600 80% 94%
Emory (Goizueta) $100,000 $25,000 $12,500 $137,000 90.4% 98.0%
Vanderbilt (Owen) $100,000 $15,000 $12,000 $127,000 83% 94%
Washington (Olin) $100,000 $15,000 NA $115,000 86% 97%

Source: Business school employment reports & P&Q reporting

Notes: Jackpot refers to graduates receiving the median of all three forms of compensation: salary, signing bonus, and other year-end guaranteed bonus. Not all graduates are given all three. At Stanford, for example, sign-on bonuses this year were collected by half the class, while 38% of the MBAs received other year-end guaranteed compensation. An asterisk indicates average numbers rather than medians.

Differences in pay often reflect industry choices and geography. Stanford’s higher median base can largely be attributed to the fact that 12% of this year’s class went into private equity, which currently pays the most lucrative comp packages to MBAs. The median PE starting base salary this year was $170,000. At Tuck, for example, only 4% of this year’s class went into private equity and the base for those PE jobs was just $120,000.

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