What Columbia MBAs Made This Year

An artist’s rendering of a student area in the upcoming Columbia Business School complex

TECH BOOMING AS FINANCE CONTINUES TO CONTRACT

A decade ago, over 55% of a graduating CBS class would move into banking. In fact, CBS was tagged with a reputation for being a Wall Street training ground. While finance remains the school’s biggest draw, it has greatly diversified in recent years. For one, consulting now runs neck-and-neck with finance, with the latter holding the edge by a slim 34.4%-to-33.1% margin. In context, the margin was 50.3%-to-22.3% just six years ago. In fact, consulting firms accounted for four-of-the-five largest consumers of CBS talent in 2017 (and five-of-five the year before).

So what happened to banking? The decline can mostly be traced back to investment banking. In the Class of 2011 – those students who were applying to business school right at the height of the financial collapse – 50.3% entered the financial sector after graduation. What’s more, a quarter of the class joined investment banking firms. Fast forward to now and finance has dropped by 20 points, with finance representing 16.9% of this drop. The investment management side also took a head-on hit, with its proportion of graduating classes cut in half. Whether correlation or causality, banks have also scaled back hiring at CBS over the past six years, including Goldman Sachs (18-to-8), Citi (16-to-7), Credit Suisse (12-to-4), Barclays (11-to-2), and UBS (8-to-2).

A second change in CBS employment stems from media and technology firms, which recruited 15.6% of the 2017 class. Amazon seemingly camped out in Morningside Heights, snapped up 23 grads – more hires than it made with the 2015 and 2016 classes combined. IBM also hauled off a record number of grads this year, while Google remained among CBS’ top ten employers. Considering the growth of New York City’s tech sector, it is quite conceivable that the share of CBS graduates entering the industry could top 20%.

CONSULTING FIRMS RAMP UP CBS HIRING

Overall, CBS graduates entering strategic management earned the most in 2017. The starting median base was $147,000, with bases ranging from $65,000 to $211,500. Not surprisingly, bankers fared well, with base pay for investment banking, private equity, venture capital, and fund management grossing $125,000-$132,500. They were also matched by graduates in the healthcare sector, who reported $125,850 in median starting pay. Real Estate ($120,000), Media and Entertainment ($115,000-$120,000), Manufacturing ($105,000), and Education and Non-Profits ($80,000) lagged further behind.

That doesn’t mean you need to be an aspiring banker or real estate mogul to hit big.  One graduate from Internet Services and eCommerce claimed a $211,000 starting salary, for example Strangely, CBS doesn’t break down sign-on bonus medians by industry, yet closely tracks “Other Compensation.” As expected, banking professionals cleaned up in this category with the medians for hedge fund management and private equity topping out at $100,000 and $72,500 respectively.

McKinsey has traditionally hired the most CBS grads – and the Class of 2017 was no different. This year, 55 graduates – or 7% of the class – joined McKinsey. Think of McKinsey as one satisfied customer, as the firm has hired 50 or more Columbia graduates for five consecutive years. By the numbers, BCG obviously counts itself among CBS’ fans after quadrupling the number of hires there over the past six years, topping out at 36 in 2017. At the same time, Amazon, Bain, and Deloitte have more than doubled their CBS hires over that same period – a testament to the appeal of such jobs…and CBS grads as well.

To read the full report, click here.

DON’T MISS: MEET COLUMBIA BUSINESS SCHOOL’S MBA CLASS OF 2019

 

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