Harvard MBAs Doubled Their Income In Six Years — How Did Your School Do?

There’s only one business school in the world where MBA graduates doubled their starting compensation six to eight years later. Guess which one it is?

Harvard Business School.

Among the wealth of data collected by Bloomberg Businessweek for its 2015 ranking of full-time MBA programs, the most compelling of all is the compensation figures for alumni. The magazine asked alums how much money they were making before going to business school, how much they made in their first post-MBA jobs, and finally how much compensation they are pulling down six to eight years later.

Harvard MBAs topped the list with the highest annual compensation at a breathtaking $290,000, exactly double the $145,000 they made immediately after graduation. When they came to HBS, they left jobs paying on average $75,000. Those numbers put the averages for the 103 schools to shame. Over the entire sample, MBAs saw a tidy 81% jump over their median compensation before  business school. After six to eight years, pay typically increased another 64%, to about $169,000 a year.

STANFORD, WHARTON, & COLUMBIA ALUMS FOLLOW HBS IN THE MONEY SWEEPSTAKES

Of course, MBAs from many of the most highly selective schools racked up great numbers as well. Stanford University’s graduates were the second highest compensated alumni with annual pay of $277,500, while the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School MBAs pulled down $270,000 a year. Columbia Business School was next with MBA alums earning $245,000 a year in compensation. The highest paid non-U.S. school to make the list is London Business School and IMD in Switzerland whose alumni are tied at $230,000 a year.

Alumni compensation equalled or exceeded $200K at only 15 schools in the world, including MIT Sloan ($241,500), Chicago Booth ($240,000), UC-Berkeley Haas ($230,000), Northwestern Kellogg ($225,000), Dartmouth Tuck ($220,000), INSEAD ($211,682), New York University Stern ($208,000), UCLA Anderson ($200,000), and SDA Bocconi in Italy ($200,000).

Not surprisingly, the most highly paid alumni tend to go into business school leaving jobs at which they were well paid. Incoming MBAs at Stanford and Wharton made the most money before going to business school, each averaging $80,000 a year. Harvard, Columbia, Kellogg and IMD students were next, all leaving jobs that paid $75,000 annually. Chicago Booth and London Business School alums gave up positions that paid $72,500 a year to go to those schools.

MANCHESTER MBAS QUIT JOBS MAKING THE LEAST MONEY & NOW EARN MORE THAN $150K A YEAR

The school’s alums who quit the lowest paying jobs and yet now have positions that are paying at least $150,000 in compensation? Alums of Manchester Business School in the United Kingdom say they entered the MBA program with $40,000-a-year jobs and now are making $150,500 six to eight years later.

Though compensation was self-reported by alumni responding to Businessweek’s survey, the numbers appear pretty reliable. The magazine defined compensation as current base salary plus guaranteed and discretionary additional income earned in 2014, excluding signing bonuses. Alums who who got MBAs in joint-degree programs were excluded from the analysis since their career paths may differ systematically from regular MBAs. The data set is based on 12,773 survey responses from alumni in he classes of 2007, 2008, and 2009. The survey has a 29.4% response rate.

All told, there are 44 schools whose alumni now make $150,000 or more a year, a dozen of them are non-U.S. business schools. And there are quite a few surprises that make the cut. Babson College MBAs are in the $150K group, along with alumni from Texas A&M and Wisconsin Business School.

(See the following page for our analysis of the compensation data at schools where alums make $150K and up)