The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business

How big. How smart. How diverse.

That’s what a class profile will tell you. Once classes begin, business schools release the all-important “numbers.” Within the tables and charts, there is a clear message for MBA applicants…

You’re not alone.

Worried that business school is a man’s world? At Wharton, 47% of the class are women. Do the math and that’s 402 women! That should ease your worries, right? Think your 718 GMAT means you won’t make the cut at Berkeley Haas? Well, it falls short of the 725 average…but fits nicely in the school’s 680-760 range of the middle 80%. Wondering whether your engineering degree will make you an outlier at Carnegie Mellon Tepper? No sweat, engineers comprise a third of the class.

A MESSAGE IN THE NUMBERS

Students meeting inside MIT Sloan

Indeed, class profiles reflect cultural nuances if you look closer. Are spouses supported by the school? Dartmouth Tuck is happy to note that 29% of its incoming class are bringing a significant other. At Stanford GSB, 14% of the class holds advanced degrees. Duke Fuqua’s profile even includes a map breaking down where students hail from (Spoiler alert: They come from all over in equal numbers).

To borrow a cliché, class profiles thread the needle, re-assuring future candidates that they will be surrounded by like-minded and accomplished peers…with enough diversity to create a life-changing journey.

Of course, business school usually means quitting your job, moving across the country, and losing a year or two of pay. And then there’s tuition and cost living. At MIT Sloan, cost of living is estimated to be $37,593…for one year. On top of that, average debt comes to $115,319 (with 48% of Sloan’s Class of 2018 graduating with debt). Those are intimidating numbers, which is why business schools issue employment reports each fall. In these pages, a different message is embedded.

Come here and we’ll make you a success!

A MEANS TO EVALUATE SCHOOLS

On these pages, you’ll discover that 96.3% of Chicago Booth had already landed job offers within three months of graduation (accepting 95.1% to boot). Virginia Darden’s employment report gushes over record pay numbers, careful to list the year’s top employers and ranking accolades to hammer home the point. Harvard Business School is transparent to a fault. Not only do they supply the requisite industry, functional, and regional pay points, but add five years of archived data for comparison. Now, that’s confidence!

Alas, not even HBS offers side-by-side data. That’s where Poets&Quants comes into the picture with analysis and interviews on class profiles and employment reports. Take Columbia Business School. Wondering how starting pay and bonus have evolved? Marc Ethier, P&Q Managing Editor, tracks all of that, breaking down compensation and industry data stretching back to 2013. Ethier takes this same care with class profiles, dissecting over five years of application, demographic, academic, and professional data.

Are your target schools trending up or down? What types of classmates could be spending the next two years alongside? What types of returns do MBA degrees from different business schools offer? Which industries are strongest at which schools? Click on the links below to learn how your favorite business schools fared in 2019.