Six figure salary right out of undergrad

That’s why it’s a bonus and not a commission (or percentage of performance, or however else it’s calculated and expressed!) Your team can be overperforming and everyone could still take a haircut based on overall results!

Lol, do I know it. To get max comp in IB, you have to personally have a great year, your group (for bonus pool purposes) have a great year and the firm have a great year. Or, get poached and sign a big guarantee!

My DD’s boyfriend got $70k bonus on $100k base this year. He is first year IB

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Was this pay for 2021 or do they have a June 30 fiscal year? 2022 has generally not been a great year. Goldman announced cutbacks and my S’s firm is also pruning.

I am actually surprised that IB doesn’t guarantee some first year bonus. IB claims to compete against tech, and tech guarantees some first year bonus. How much of a commitment does the bank have to the analyst when it is a fixed length program?

June 30 I believe because the payout was in August. He doesn’t work for GS

I saw that, but I assume the cutbacks/pruning are not happening to 0-2 year IB analysts?

To my knowledge, not 0-2 analysts. Mostly accelerated push of low performers. An interesting development is that top performers in hot areas are being poached more aggressively even this late into the year. I saw that a Goldman trader that made $30mm last year got poached by Millenium recently. https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/2022/10/top-trader-goldman-sachs

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Did he make 30mm for the firm? Or was he paid 30mm?

On WSO, some second year anaysts claim cuts are hitting their level

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No commitment, but for the stub year the bonus are probably fairly lock step. For the first full year, there may be some variability based on personal, group and firm performance, but nowhere near the variability of more senior bankers.

The trader reportedly was compensated $30mm. The commodities trading business was reported to have generated over $2B in revenues.

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That is rough. If their contracts were going to expire soon, you’d think they let them stay on so they could seek a new job or apply to BSchool vs singling them out as a terminated employee.

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Contracts? Not a contract. Everyone is an at-will employee and can be terminated at any time and for any reason… within the limits of both federal and state (and potentially local) law.

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IB analysts ( and those in commercial banking, etc) now sign contracts, for 18-24 month spans. If they voluntarily leave before the contract ends they need to repay their signing bonus usually.

I do have some sympathy for them; tough to lateral right now, and at some firms they claim they were mid-bucket performers, so surprised.

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Can you specify what you mean by “common” and indicate whether you’re thinking of specific majors, a median, an average per major, per college…?
Are you asking for yourself, a child/student, in general?

I think it’s pretty common to consider 50-60K a good salary for someone who’s just graduated college (NYU boasts of a 64k average), except in HCOLA where monthly rent can be as high as 3-5K a month.

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You don’t necessarily pay that amount to live in HCOLA. Both of my kids are in HCOLA, they have been paying less than $1500 per person, sharing with a roommate. When I was their age, I shared with 2-3 roommates.

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Same. They live with roommates. DD pays $1500 plus utilities with one roommate in a very nice area of SF

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usually sign on bonuses are not given immediately - they will pay out once you are there for a certain length of time. The last one my daughter got was something like 1/2 at 1 month and 1/2 at 6 month

So interesting to read all the different ways companies handle these things. My D got her sign on bonus 4 weeks after she accepted her offer and she doesn’t start until next summer. She does have to pay it back if she doesn’t stay 6 months.

Some things to consider regarding the stats are:

  1. It is based on a newspaper survey of seniors at the college asking “expected” future compensation after graduation rather than the Yale format of asking alumni 6-months after graduating or CollegeScorecard format of looking at tax reported earnings.

  2. The title of this thread begins “six figure salary” . The survey is instead asked for expected total compensation including sign-up bonus, performance bonus, stock options, … not just salary.

  3. Most students filling out the survey did not choose to report expected compensation.

If you look at other sources, conclusions often differ. For example, in a previous thread from a few years ago (old data that is not inflation adjusted), I looked up the tax reported total compensation 1-2 years out of college, as listed in CollegeScorecard. CollegeScorecard only includes persons in federal database, which is mostly persons who receive federal aid. Only employed alumni who are not enrolled in grad/professional school are included in earnings calculations. The 8 Ivy League colleges had the following median tax reported earnings. While the specific numbers are not precise, the point is the higher six figure type salaries were not common outside of a few specific and limited areas. These specific areas are typically dramatically overrpresented among students at highly selective Ivy-type private colleges. For example, many such colleges have had enrollment in CS increase by a factor of 5x or more in recent years, often making CS and econ the 2 most popular majors. Software engineering, finance, consulting, MD, … are usually common choices after graduation. Typically less lucrative fields are usually far less common choices.

Computer Science – $110k
— Large Gap —
Mathematics – $82k
Economics – $74k
Nursing – $74k
Engineering (average of all) – $70k
Business – $62k

Average of All Students – $60k

Psychology – $42k
English – $36k
Biology – $36k
Education – $32k
Chemistry – $31k

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