Yale SOM MBAs Report 12.5% Jump In Median Pay In 2022

Yale SOM Class of 2022 MBAs set new school records in median salary and median total pay. Tony Rinaldo photo

The value of an MBA to nearly all who attain one from a top business school cannot be seriously questioned. If further evidence of that fact were needed it can be found in the Class of 2022 employment report for Yale School of Management, released earlier this month.

Even as more of them received job offers than any of their predecessors, setting a new school record for offers received by 90 days after graduation, Yale SOM’s latest class of MBAs saw a huge jump not only in median starting salary but median total pay, as well. The result was an employment report in line with Yale’s peer schools, most of which have set schools records of their own this year in one category or another.

TOTAL MEDIAN COMP FOR YALE 2022 MBAs: $185,940

About that school record for job offers received: In 2021, offers at 90 days for Yale MBAs bounced way back to 95.7% after dropping from 92.4% in 2019 to 90.2% in 2020, in the depths of the coronavirus pandemic; after slipping to 85.9% from 91.4%, job acceptances after three months roared back to 94.1%. This year, offers increased to a school-record 96.1%, though acceptance dropped slightly to 93.3%. Notably, international students received job offers at a higher rate than U.S. citizens and permanent residents, with 98.5% receiving an offer by three months after graduation.

It's one thing to get a job offer; it's another for it to be the right one, at the right salary. In 2021, for the 256 of 312 Yale grads seeking employment, SOM reported only a very modest increase in median starting salary, to $140,400 from $140,000; total median compensation for Yale MBAs last year was $165,248, an $85 decline from 2020 — a statistically insignificant 0.05%. (For comparison, the overall compensation increase at Yale between 2018 and 2019 was 2.3%.)

This year, for 282 Yalies seeking jobs out of 327 graduates, median starting salary was $160,110, up 14% and nearly $20,000; adding that to a median signing bonus of $30,000 (flat for the fifth straight year) reported by 82.1% of grads, plus a median year-end bonus of $20,000 reported by 6%, brings Yale MBAs' median total compensation to $185,940, up more than $20K and 12.5% in one year.

See the links at the bottom of this page for comparisons to Yale's peer schools' MBA Class of 2022.

NEARLY HALF OF THE CLASS GOES INTO CONSULTING

Consulting haș always been Yale MBAs' top industry but in 2022 that choice became glaring. Nearly half the class reported jobs in the field, 46%, up by more than one-third from 2021. Finance dropped to 21.7% from 25%; tech dropped to 7.6% from 10%; and CPG/retail dropped to 11.4% from 15.8%. See table above for details.

Top hiring firms for Yale MBAs this year were the usual consulting bigwigs: the MBB firms, McKinsey, Bain, and Boston Consulting Group, along with Accenture, Strategy&, EY-Parthenon, and Deloitte. On the tech side, Amazon, Google, Meta, Dell, and many others recruited Yalies.

Consulting salaries also paced most other fields, at a median $175,000; the exception is those who went into investment banking, who matched the consultants. Retail grads reported a remarkable signing bonus median of $75,000.

DON'T MISS LAST YEAR'S STORY ON YALE'S MBA CLASS OF 2021 EMPLOYMENT REPORT

AND SEE OUR STORIES ON EMPLOYMENT REPORTS AT THE TOP B-SCHOOLS: 

THE WHARTON SCHOOL

HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL

MIT SLOAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

NORTHWESTERN KELLOGG SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

DARTMOUTH TUCK SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

UC-BERKELEY HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

VIRGINIA DARDEN SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

MICHIGAN ROSS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

CARNEGIE MELLON TEPPER SCHOOL OF BUSINESS