INSEAD’s MBA Value Proposition In 10 Charts

INSEAD was once again the top consulting school by percentage of class in 2019, with more than half its MBA graduates going into the industry. File photo

When you compare INSEAD MBA starting pay with many other leading business schools, you'll typically find that the numbers are considerably lower. Consider the median base salary last year of just $103,800. That compares with $150,000 at Harvard Business School and Wharton and $156,000 at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. How to explain that wide disparity? A much higher percentage of INSEAD grads take jobs in countries where the pay is significantly lower than in the U.S., even for the same jobs with global companies. Plus, exchange rates that convert local currencies into dollars can also play havoc with the reported numbers by INSEAD. That's why context is extremely important here. You can't really compare apples with oranges and that is what you would be doing if you put INSEAD's starting pay numbers along side any of the top U.S. MBA programs.

INSEAD puts so many MBAs into consulting that this industry is the number one career choice for the school's graduates. Part of the reason is simple: Many students here are sponsored by the big consulting firms which like the idea of losing their employees for merely ten months, rather than two years. In 2020, for instance, McKinsey, Bain and BCG, the so-called MBB, hired 265 graduates straight out of the MBA program at INSEAD. But 41% of them, 109 grads in all, had been employed by the MBB before going to campus and went straight back to MBB once they graduated. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that INSEAD is the undisputed global leader in new post-MBA placements into MBB. No other MBA program has a larger network of alumni in the management consulting industry, and no other MBA program sends a larger percentage of its student body into the consulting industry. The other reason so many INSEAD MBAs go into consulting is for the pay. No other industry pays more overall to INSEAD MBAs than the consulting biz.

Just because consulting is the best paying career route out of INSEAD doesn't mean that the highest paid graduates in any given year all end up in that sector. In fact, the highest base salary for a 2020 INSEAD MBA went to a graduate who took a job in sales and marketing in media, entertainment and advertising. That is an incredibly novel high-paying job. At most U.S. business schools, the highest paid MBAs end up in private equity, hedge funds and investment management, or venture capital. At INSEAD in 2020, another grad went into consulting in the United Arab Emirates with a starting base of $190,000. Yet another grad took a job in IT/telecom in Korea for a base salary of $172,000.

We've made the point before and we'll make it again--with a good bit of evidence behind our earlier statement. If you graduate at INSEAD, where you go to work will play a big role in how much money you'll make. Just look at the wide variances in pay for students who took jobs in consulting. In Brazil, starting base salaries for INSEAD MBAs who went to work in consulting firms were a mere $69,000 a year. That's nearly $100,000 less than those who got consulting jobs in the U.S. where the median base salary was a hefty $165,000.