The Ultimate MBA Talent War: Which Schools Win McKinsey, Goldman & Google?

MBA alumni presence at three prestige mainstream MBA employers

If you’re a prospective MBA candidate or an existing MBA student, there are many employers that convey immediate prestige in a casual conversation or one a resume. But three in particular, in the three most dominant industries that attract MBA graduates, are unquestionably at the top: McKinsey & Co. in consulting, Goldman Sachs in investment banking, and Google in tech.

So it’s inevitable to ask which business schools supply the most MBA talent to these three firms. Andrew Dale, a Kellogg MBA who is now general manager for Leland, the admissions consulting and coaching firm, has crunched the numbers to come up with a highly revealing analysis. He clearly knows how to sift through LinkedIn’s massive database of profiles to get the answers. After all, he once worked at LinkedIn in business operations.

Yet, McKinsey takes issue with the findings, suggesting that it probably includes not only current employees but most importantly alumni who have since left the firm but have the consulting firm in their LinkedIn profiles. “While we’re proud to have many colleagues and alumni from these terrific institutions, this dataset is quite inaccurate,” a spokesperson tells Poets&Quants. “Let’s just say that if someone used this as their answer in a case, they would not be joining us.”

Ouch. So do take these numbers with a very big grain of salt. Dale has been digging into the data in efforts to reveal the MBA alumni presence at various firms, from Amazon to Bain & Co., in a fascinating series of posts on his LinkedIn feed. In many cases, the analysis confirms what you might think: The M7 figure prominently at these elite MBA employers. But there are plenty of surprises in the data as well.

If you were to compare this data with the number of living MBA alumni at each business school, you would get a different look at the results that may well be even more revealing (see table below). What you find is that INSEAD even beats Harvard at McKinsey and that Yale School of Management shows up even better than Wharton, Chicago Booth, Kellogg, and Columbia.

MBA hires at McKinsey, Goldman and Google normalized for the size of a school’s living alumni

HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL MBA HIRES DOMINATE MCKINSEY & CO.

At McKinsey, Dale unsurprisingly argues that Harvard Business School MBAs dominate, with a remarkable 3,707 Harvard MBAs currently employed by the consulting powerhouse. The business school with the second largest alumni base at McKinsey is not an M7 school. It’s INSEAD with more than 3,000 MBA grads.

True enough, the M7 MBA programs are well represented. According to Dale, Wharton can claim nearly 2,400 alumni, while Kellogg, Columbia, Chicago Booth, and Stanford are in the 1,300-1,600 range. MIT Sloan can boast 950 alumni. Of course, all these numbers are also a reflection of the size of a school’s graduating class. Harvard has long pumped out the most prestige MBAs year after year so it would have a considerable advantage over a school such as Dartmouth Tuck because HBS puts more than three times the MBAs into the marketplace every year than Tuck (943 vs 304).

Source: Analysis by Andrew Dale for Leland

MBA hires at Goldman Sachs are far fewer than McKinsey, though it equals the consulting firm in prestige. Yet Harvard comes in fourth at Goldman, behind Columbia, NYU Stern, and Wharton–business schools with strong reputations in finance. As Dale notes New York’s dominance in his commentary on the findings, “CBS leads the pack with 157 alumni at Goldman Sachs, showcasing Columbia’s unbeatable proximity advantage and deep Wall Street connections. NYU Stern follows closely with 147, cementing the New York MBA pipeline to finance.”

One likely surprise is the appearance of MBA grads from schools that few U.S. or European candidates would consider. “Don’t underestimate the global draw! IIM Bangalore (78) and IIM Calcutta (74) demonstrate that Goldman’s international offices attract top talent from India’s premier programs,” writes Dale. “LBS (53) and IIM Ahmedabad (50) also show strong representation.”

Source: Andrew Dale for Leland

And then there is tech giant Google. The schools that lead the Google parade are clearly a surprise. At the very top is Wharton with 339 MBA alums, followed by Berkeley Haas, with 337, and Northwestern Kellogg, with 325. “Stanford GSB (143) and MIT Sloan (150) land lower than expected,” adds Dale, “even accounting for smaller class sizes. Has Google gotten too big and corporate for the entrepreneur-types these programs attract? I’d bet these schools outperformed significantly if we looked at the data 10-15 years ago when Google was smaller.”

The Indian School of Business leads all the schools based in India which is well represented at Google and includes the IIMs at Bangalore, Ahmedabad, and Calcutta. INSEAD again has a strong showing, topping all non-U.S. MBA programs for having the most alums at the tech firm.

Source: Andrew Dale for Leland

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