People don’t want solutions. They want comfort and reinforcement.

That’s why they often turn to numbers.

Sometimes, numbers give us permission. They validate what we hope and reinforce what we feel. They are facts we tell ourselves – objective and indisputable. Reality is, numbers are the result of a process – one subject to doomed methodologies or unconscious bias. At the same time, they are open to manipulation and misinterpretation.

In the end, numbers don’t care about feelings. And even the best numbers can produce the worst analysis.

PAY VARIES AMONG INDUSTRY AND SCHOOL

Take pay. It doesn’t get more personal than compensation. It reflects the value that employers place on your capabilities and contributions. For MBAs, pay is the finish line for years-long journey. It started with socking thousands of dollars into consultants and prep. Along the way, they jumped off a secure career track, uprooted their lives to relocate, sacrificed nearly two years of pay, and often accrued six figures of debt. They may have dreamed of following their passions and securing their future. After they walk the stage, they’re expecting an immediate return.

That return differs by industry and school. Some pay better than others. Which profession offers the highest bases early on? It is hard to beat Consulting. In 2023, there were 26 business schools where consulting graduates earned $160,000 or more to start. Compare that to Marketing, where just two programs produced graduates who averaged $160,000 or more. While Finance has historically been associated with the big bucks, just 12 schools reported starting bases of $160,000 or more here.

In each of these fields – Consulting, Marketing, and Finance – Stanford GSB grads snapped up the highest bases. While higher-ranked programs tend to rake in the highest bases, there are certainly exceptions, particularly at top end pay. Just look at Consulting. True, firms tend to issue boilerplate pay packages where most differences revolve around cost of living. While conventional wisdom says consulting firms frown on negotiating, a Stanford MBA pulled in a $322,000 base – well above their classmates’ $186,110 average. There is a trickle-down effect to programs outside the biggest names too. Last year, a University of Michigan Ross grad, for example, accepted a $300,000 base – the 2nd-highest starting pay in Consulting. Not to be outdone, Georgia Tech’s Scheller College produced a grad who made $249,600. Among Consulting hires, that was $400 less than the highest-paid Harvard Business School grad and better than any base landed by graduates from the Wharton School, Northwestern Kellogg, Chicago Booth, or MIT Sloan.

A SCHOOL-BY-SCHOOL AND INDUSTRY-BY-INDUSTRY COMPARISON

In other words, it pays to know what you’re worth – and how the market perceives the value of your MBA counterparts. In P&Q’s annual occupation and industry pay collection, we supply the low, average, and high base salaries at each school – the starting point for amu negotiation strategy. Even more, P&Q includes the bases from the previous year, so you can gauge the trajectory of pay increases in the coming year. In addition, P&Q stacks the business schools so you can compare schools’ performance against each other.

Granted, these numbers, which were supplied by business schools to U.S. News & World Report, don’t give the full picture. Notably, they don’t integrate additional compensation streams, such as sign-on bonus, performance bonus, profit sharing, 401K match, and tuition reimbursement. Those numbers simply vary too widely by company, let alone industry. That said, the inclusion (and exclusion) of business schools is perhaps the most underrated data point. On the surface, pay numbers reflect which programs produced classes where three or more students who entered a particular field. More deeply, it flags that certain programs possess the academic programming, industry connections, institutional support, or alumni network that enable students to find work. That’s particularly true in less celebrated fields like Management Information Systems. Here, just 11 business schools reported average base pay, with the highest-ranked programs included Northwestern Kellogg, UC Berkeley Haas, and Yale SOM. Despite this, North Carolina Kenan-Flagler reaped the highest paycheck honors, where one graduate reeled in a $249,600 starting salary in MIS.

What are various industries willing to shell out for talent from certain schools? What are their pay floors and ceilings? Click on the links below to see high, average, and low pay by occupation, industry and school.