Amazon’s Amazing MBA Hiring Binge At Ross

University of Michigan, Ross School of Business

CONSULTING PAID ROSS MBAS THE MOST CASH TO START

For MBAs graduating in 2015, it has been a very good year. Ross is the fifth prominent business school to report higher starting pay for its MBA graduates, following strong employment reports from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, Indiana University’s Kelley School, Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, and Vanderbilt University’s Owen School of Business.

The highest starting salaries were achieved by MBAs who went into consulting, which attracted 31% of the class. Though the consulting industry share of the class was down from 34% last year, consuling remained the number one indsutry hiring MBAs at the Ross School. The median base salary for consultants this year was $135,000, with 98% of the MBAs reporting that they had also received median signing bonuses of $25,000 and 53% reporting other guaranteed median compensation of $33,000. Students who collected all three forms of compensation in consulting–clearly the majority–would have left Ross with starting median pay packages of $193,000.

Manufacturing claimed the second biggest chunk of Ross MBAs, hiring nearly 26% of the class. The median base for these jobs was $30,000 lower than consulting at $105,000, with 88% receiving median sign-on bonuses of $21,000 and 55% of those hires landing median other guaranteed comp of $10,350.

TECH JOBS PAID A MEDIAN $117,000 IN BASE WITH $27,000 MEDIAN SIGN-ON BONUSES

Thanks to those Amazon hires, technology took more MBAs out of Ross this year than finance, 18% versus 15%, with finance hires evenly split between financial services and investment banking. The i-bankers, making up 7.5% of the class, landed median base pay of $125,000, with 96% reporting median sign-on bonuses of $40,000—highest of any industry recruiting MBAs at Ross—and 27% receiving other guaranteed compensation of $20,000. The highest base for a graduating MBA who went into investment banking this year was $150,000. The 7.5% of the MBAs who went into financial services also had median starting salaries of $125,000, with 89% reporting median signing bonuses of $37,500 and 39% receiving median other guaranteed comp of $19,375.

While the pay packages in tech were lower than consulting and finance, it apparently made little difference to many students who see the industry as the place to be. The median starting salary for tech jobs was $117,000, $18,000 under consulting and $8,000 below finance. Fewer tech hires also received sign-on bonuses, 84%, though the median for those payouts was $27,000, a couple grand over the consulting signing bonuses. Some 49% of the students who took jobs in tech reported median other guaranteed comp of $21,000.

Besides Amazon’s hiring binge at Ross, the school’s leading employers this year were 3M, AT Kearney, Accenture, Bain, Barclays, Citi, Cummins, Deloitte, Dish Network, Ecolab, Ernst & Young, General Mills, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, Google, Intel, JP Morgan Chase, Kraft Heinz Group, McKinsey, Microsoft, Pepsi, PwC, RBC Capital Markets, S.C. Johnson & Son, Strategy&, Target, The Boston Consulting Group, Wells Fargo, and ZS Associates.

Less than 1% of the Class of 2017 (only three reporting graduating MBAs) at Ross start or bought companies, according to the school, a figure well below the average 5% of MBA graduates who do startups.

Related Stories:

VANDERBILT OWEN REPORTS ALL-TIME HIGH IN MBA SALARIES