12 Charts That Tell The Wharton MBA Story

The University of Pennsylvania Wharton School – Ethan Baron photo

It won't come as a surprise to anyone that the largest single chunk of MBAs at Wharton enter the financial services industry. Last year, 36.2% took jobs at private equity and venture capital firms, investment banking and investment management houses, and other financial sector employers. Next up? Consulting, of course, which hired 24.5% of the Class of 2020.

An industry view is one way to look at what happens to a Wharton class but what do these MBAs actually do? Strategy and consulting work tops the function view of employment, but private equity is next and has increased by 50% in the past five years alone.

Compared to Harvard Business School and Stanford, Wharton MBAs don't seem all that interested in launching their own startups. A mere 3.1% of the Class of 2020 became entrepreneurs. That compares with 18% at Stanford and 11% at Harvard.

And if Wharton startup activity tells you something about risk aversion, the above table only reinforces the view that Wharton MBAs tend to play it safe. A record 12.3% of the Class of 2020 was sponsored and returned to their pre-MBA employers, hopefully at much higher rates of pay.

Wharton is U.S. centric, especially when it comes to where graduating MBAs take their first jobs out of school. Just look at the vast difference between the percentage of students who accept jobs in the U.S. compared to the next two largest locations of jobs in Europe and Asia.