For Chicago Booth’s Class Of 2025, Lower Total Pay As Elite MBA Hiring Remains Uneven

Total median compensation for Chicago Booth’s Class of 2025 fell for a second straight year, dropping to $194,500, the latest sign that the MBA job market’s slowdown continues to weigh on outcomes – even at one of the most analytically rigorous and finance-oriented business schools in the world.

The decline in total pay, which includes base salary and sign-on bonus (the latter adjusted for the share of graduates receiving them), comes amid uneven employment results that reinforce how cautious employers remain across elite MBA pipelines as AI roils the employment market.

Among 2025 Booth graduates seeking work (534 grads), 80.9% had job offers at graduation, while 78.1% had accepted them, according to the school’s latest employment report. By three months after graduation, the offer rate rose to 89.1%, with 87.8% accepting jobs – an improvement, but still below the near-universal employment outcomes Booth posted in stronger hiring cycles. As usual, international grads slightly trailed their U.S. citizen colleagues in each category.

A SLOWER PATH FROM GRADUATION TO JOBS

While outcomes improved after graduation, more than one in five Booth MBAs were still without offers at commencement, a result of delayed hiring and prolonged searches that have become a feature of the current cycle.

Consulting once again dominated Booth’s employment results, as it has every year since 2019, accounting for 36.7% of accepted offers, followed by financial services at 31.6%. Technology roles made up 14.1% of hires, which remains well below pre-2022 levels.

Median base salary held steady at $175,000, unchanged from last year, with reported salaries ranging from $70,000 to $400,000, the latter matching the high salary from 2024. The median is down from a high of $180K in 2023. About 65% of Boothies reported receiving a sign-on bonus, at a median of $30K, both down for a second straight year. Typical bonuses clustered in the $30,000 to $40,000 range. 

OUTCOMES BY INDUSTRY & LOCATION

As usual pay outcomes also varied sharply by industry. Booth MBAs entering consulting led the way with a median base salary of $190,000, while financial services roles delivered a median of $175,000, with wide dispersion across investment banking, private equity, and investment management. Technology roles trailed both, with a median base salary of $151,000, underscoring how tech compensation has yet to fully rebound from the post-pandemic pullback even as hiring stabilized modestly. 

Geography, of course, played a role in shaping outcomes. Nearly 95% of Booth’s full-time hires were based in the United States, with the Midwest accounting for 32.2% of roles, driven overwhelmingly by Chicago, which alone captured more than 30% of all hires. The Northeast followed at 29%, led by New York at 26.7%, while the West claimed 19.6%, including 11.3% in the Bay Area. Median salaries varied meaningfully by region, with the highest medians clustered in New York, the Bay Area, and Boston, where typical pay ranged from the high $170,000s to around $190,000, while roles in the Midwest and South generally posted lower – though still competitive – median salaries in the mid-$160,000s to low-$170,000s, reflecting differences in industry mix and cost of living. 

For a second straight year, Boston Consulting Group led all employers of Booth MBAs, hiring 52 in 2025, or 11% of the class, up from 48 in 2024. BCG was followed by McKinsey & Company with 35 hires and Bain & Company with 30 – meaning the “big three” consulting firms alone employed nearly one in four Booth MBAs in the Class of 2025. Among non-consulting employers, Amazon hired 20 Boothies, while Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase each hired 11.

HOW BOOTH STACKS UP AGAINST STANFORD & HARVARD

Booth’s results look as mixed as its peers’, highlighting how fragmented the recovery remains at the very top of the MBA market.

At Stanford Graduate School of Business, early job outcomes were even weaker than Booth’s. Roughly two-thirds of Stanford MBAs seeking jobs had offers at graduation, and just over half had accepted one. But Stanford’s results strengthened markedly after commencement. By three months out, about 90% of job seekers had received offers, a recovery similar to Booth’s.

Compensation told a different story. While Stanford’s median base salary remained among the highest in the MBA market, total pay declined for a second consecutive year as bonuses and variable compensation continued to compress, even as technology rebounded to become the school’s largest hiring sector.

At Harvard Business School, the picture was more clearly positive. About 90% of job-seeking graduates had received offers three months after graduation, with roughly 84% accepting them – results that exceeded Booth’s three-month acceptance rate and marked a rebound from weaker outcomes in the prior two classes.

Compensation also moved decisively upward, with Harvard reporting a year-over-year increase in median base salary and rising total pay, supported by stronger demand across consulting, finance, and a notably large share of graduates launching or joining startups.

DON’T MISS STANFORD MBA JOBS: GSBers’ TOTAL PAY DECLINES FOR A SECOND STRAIGHT YEAR and HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL CLASS OF 2025 JOBS REPORT: OFFERS REBOUND, PAY SOARS

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