<p>Hello, i recently saw a posting in my school for starting salaries for MBA's</p>
<p>I am currently getting a BS in industrial engineering and i plan on getting an MBA 5 or so years afterwards.</p>
<p>I noticed that starting salary for an MBA from any of the top 25ish schools is > 100k. </p>
<p>is this true?</p>
<p>i always thought that MBAs were everywhere now. I would not believe every one of them whoo graduated from top 25 bschool ended up with 100k+ starting ?</p>
<p>MBAs from top 25 schools aren't everywhere. If you come from a top school you should be able to net the kinds of jobs that pay big salaries.</p>
<p>I agree that there just are not that many grads from the top schools. While you may think that a 100K salary is huge, you need to look at the profile of people in these top 25 classes. Most of them are high achievers and entered business school with salaries that commonly average 60-70K per year. In fact most students who are accepted at these MBA programs do an analysis based on opportunity cost to see how long it will likely take to pay back for the MBA. In addition, there have been articles in the news about how the highest paying jobs in consulting and finance are now often filled by promotion from within, and thus the number of recruited MBA's from top schools is lower than in past years. </p>
<p>An MBA is an easy degree to get, and you can get one online if you want the inititals after your name. Some big name schools offer executive or part time programs, and many people opt for this route (especially if their employer picks up the tab).</p>
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i always thought that MBAs were everywhere now. I would not believe every one of them whoo graduated from top 25 bschool ended up with 100k+ starting ?
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<p>Obviously not every single one ends up with such a salary. But many of them do. </p>
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An MBA is an easy degree to get
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<p>I agree that if you're talking about a top degree, it's easy to get provided that you get in. The hardeset part about getting these degrees is getting in in the first place. </p>
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I noticed that starting salary for an MBA from any of the top 25ish schools is > 100k...
In fact most students who are accepted at these MBA programs do an analysis based on opportunity cost to see how long it will likely take to pay back for the MBA.
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<p>Look, if all you care about is money, then just go into investment banking after your MBA. You do that, and you're basically assured of paying back your opportunity cost. I am quite convinced that anybody who wants to get a quick positive return on their MBA investment can do so just by choosing banking as their post-MBA job. Granted, the banking lifestyle is crap, but like I said, if all you care about is money, then that's the way to go.</p>
<p>100k sounds low to me for a top MBA</p>
<p>Hey, I think so too, cmaher. </p>
<p>However, it should be noted that post-MBA pay has a tendency to rise quite quickly. While you may be making 100k to start, provided you are successful, you could easily be making double or triple that in a relatively short period of time. This rampup is especially prominent in investment banking and related fields. Provided you are successful (which is no mean feat), you could be touching 7 figures of annual pay after 10-15 years.</p>
<p>Acually 100K for salary plus bonus is a high estimate for the top 25 schools. Furthermore, many of these top grads consider their starting salary to be lower than what they were earning prior to the MBA. THe reason is that their job prior to the MBA was closer to 40 hours per week and their job post MBA is closer to 65 hours per week. As I mentioned above, the highest paying jobs in consulting and finance are undergoing a shift in terms of who gets the job. Just a few years ago a BA who spent 5 years in a firm would hit a glass ceiling and move on to a MBA. WHat is happening now is that the firms are promoting from within and there are fewer of these jobs for the MBA grads. For example, in NYC many firms pay for an MBA and if you go to the night division of NYU's Stern business school you will find it filled with this profile of student. Good luck to all.</p>
<p>Personally, I find the USNews reported "salary + bonus" data to be highly suspect, as I doubt that it fully captures all the bonus data, especially year-end bonus data which is inherently unpredictable. As you get into post-MBA jobs, the bonus begins to take up more and more of your total pay. </p>
<p>Furthermore, I would say that if you really want your MBA to pay off financially, choose investment banking. The lifestyle is crap, but the payoff is undeniable.</p>
<p>"MBA graduates usually start at the Associate level. Associate salaries start with a $95,000 base salary, a sign-on bonus, and expected bonus of around $100,000."</p>
<p>And note the 1999-2001 compensation packages below</p>
<p><a href="http://www.careers-in-finance.com/ibsal.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.careers-in-finance.com/ibsal.htm</a></p>
<p>I would also argue that anybody who is trying to get into a top 25 school was almost certainly not working anywhere close to 40 hours a week prior to their MBA. A large allotment of the class will consist of former consultants and bankers for which 70-90 hour workweeks are typical. Even those that came from standard industry usually come from fast-track jobs that easily approach 60-70 hours. It's not easy to amass the kind of work experience you will need to get into a top 25 school if you're only working 40 hours a week. I'm sure some people have done it, but I personally wouldn't bank on doing it.</p>
<p>I do agree that more companies are trying to promote within. However, the bottom line is that the MBA is still a tried and true way for people to switch careers, especially to consulting and banking. If you've never done consulting or banking before, getting an MBA is probably the only chance you have to get in.</p>
<p>One doesn't just glibly choose investment banking. They have to choose you as well.</p>
<p>Might as well say "just choose to be a surgeon".</p>
<p>Entry into the profession is not a given, from any school.</p>
<p>These are coveted jobs.</p>
<p>I agree. This thread is premised upon someone graduating from a top 25 MBA program. I can't imagine that a graduate below one of the top 10 schools stands much of a chance at a bulge bracket firm, but as they said in the Adams Family "stranger things have happened".</p>
<p>Who said anything about the bulge bracket? </p>
<p>I agree that positions in Wall Street bulge-bracket positions are highly coveted. However, at the same time, there are other positions with regional players or boutiques, often times, not located on Wall Street, that are much easier to get. True, these positions obviously don't pay as well as the Wall Street bulge bracket positions. But they still pay pretty well, relative to the other jobs you can get with an MBA. Hence, the point still stands that you can make your MBA pay off relatively quickly by choosing banking, whether bulge bracket or not.</p>
<p>I'll put it to you this way. At HBS and Sloan, it is clearly true that the positions with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and the like are extremely highly coveted. In fact, there is strong competition and a long waiting list to get interview slots with them. On the other hand, I see that there are plenty of other small, relatively unknown banks that don't even come close to filling their interview slots. In fact, several such banks, which shall remain unnamed, actually cancelled their oncampus recruiting interview trips due to lack of interest, and basically flew out to their offices those few students who were interested in interviewing. </p>
<p>Also, I would point out that about 1/3 of MBA students from Sloan and HBS will take banking jobs (or highly related jobs like PE or hedge funds). However, anecdotal data from the career offices indicate that at most only 75% of those who get finance offers actually go into finance. Plenty of people choose to interview with both finance and some other field (usually consulting) to hedge their bets. So what that basically means is that roughly 1/2 of the graduating students at HBS and Sloan will get finance job offers. Again, many of them won't be the super-prestige Wall Street bulge bracket positions. But they are still relatively high-paying positions. </p>
<p>Furthermore, that doesn't figure in those people who didn't even try to get a finance offer. There are plenty of students who definitely have the ability to get a banking job, but don't want it because they know they'd rather do consulting, high tech, start their own company, go for their PhD or whatever it is. Every top MBA school is filled with students who could get a finance offer if they wanted to, they just don't want to. Hence, even that statistic of 50% of Sloan/HBS students who get finance offers is a vast understatement because it includes all those students who don't even try to get it. What we should really be talking about is the percentage of students who actually try to get an offer and get it. I don't know what the statistic for that is (nobody does), but it wouldn't surprise me if it was well over 75%.</p>
<p>Now, true, I've just been talking about HBS and Sloan students. But even the #25 MBA school out there is pretty decent. I have to imagine that if you try hard to get the position, you're at least going to have a fair chance. Not with the bulge bracket, maybe. Maybe it will have to be with a scrub regional boutique. But hey, you're still making pretty good money.</p>
<p>It's not that easy at any of these places, trust me. Entry gets exponentially more difficult below the top several MBA programs. Most of the "top 25" we didn't hire a single person.</p>
<p>The MBA program I attended, while well respected, is not typically ranked "top 5". Many people from my MBA program would have given a body organ to get into any investment bank whatsoever. (As opposed to commercial banking, where they did well). Forget bulge bracket, just any investment bank. I was one of the lucky few.</p>
<p>Regional firms are also quite selective, though the criteria can be different. They have few jobs and prefer locals. The regional firm I worked for would prefer a top local state U grad to a Harvard B-school grad any day of the week. Unless maybe if the Harvard guy grew up there. They want people who have local connections and will stay there. And years go by when they don't have a single opening in investment banking. There simply aren't that many jobs. .</p>
<p>thinking about it:</p>
<p>Actually what I've observed at the regionals is they hire people with previous experience. Refugees from the big firms, as well as from corporate finance departments and regional commercial banks. They want people who can come in with business, or who already know how to get business, or who have established connections to get business.</p>
<p>These firms do not have the resources or the deal flow to train people. They are also less likely to get business based on their massive staffing capabilities, it's more weighted towards relationships.</p>
<p>The few entry-level people who come in with no experience mostly come in as I stated before. There are very few jobs. Also their salaries are not that similar to that at the NY shops. </p>
<p>If you have business, you can do very well at one of these places; maybe even better than at a big firm because they need you relatively more. But for entry level people the firms are competing primarily with other regional non-investment bank employers. Compensation reflects this until you are actually worth something. Unlike the NY banks.</p>
<p>Well look. I admit that I often times use the term Ibanking unrigorously. What I really mean to say is ALL relatively high-paying finance jobs, including sales/trading, asset management, etc. After all, we are talking about this within the context of whether you can pay back your MBA in a reasonable amount of time. It doesn't matter where exactly the money comes from, as long as it comes. </p>
<p>And so again, I would reiterate my numbers. From what I've seen, about 1/3 of all MBA grads from the top schools get relatively high paying financial services jobs of some sort. That's actually a tremendously high figure when you realize that not everybody who gets a financial services offer will take it and not everybody even applied to get a financial services job in the first place. What that tells me is that if you go to a top school and you really want a financial services job and you work hard to get it, you stand a good chance of getting something. Maybe not a bulge-bracket offer. But something. Guaranteed? No. But a good chance? I would say so. </p>
<p>And consider what you said in your last post. You said that regional firms tend to hire people who are refugees from other places, like corporate finance dpts. or regional commercial banks. So what that means is that that is another path you can take. Let's say that you don't get any financial services job. Then you can take a job in corporate finance or a commercial bank and try to use that to get in later. </p>
<p>The issue that I've seen is that most people aren't willing to take it this far. If they can't get a bulge-bracket true Ibanking job on Wall Street right from the get-go, then they would rather go do consulting or whatever. And that's fine. I probably wouldn't walk to take it that far either. But my point is, for those people who get into a top B-school and are willing to take it this far, who really are willing to work for a no-name firm out in the boonies for awhile, I think their chances are pretty decent.</p>
<p>So if you can get a job at a botique or smaller less prestigious bank would it be possible to switch over to a BB bank after a few years experience? </p>
<p>How would working at a smaller lesser know bank look for MBA admissions? Obiously not as good as a BB job but would it still be better than just standard industry right??</p>
<p>1) It is possible. If you impress someone. Or if you have business. But very much a happenstance sort of thing, not something to count on happening. It's much easier to go back & forth if you start with one of the big boys.</p>
<p>And as I said there are fewer jobs like this in the first place, and they are also not easy to get.</p>
<p>2) For admissions: I think it's good, personally. If you do well there and learn something. But I'm not a B-school admissions officer. Moreover, good luck getting one of these jobs, like I said.</p>
<p>AS for being better than "standard industry" for B-school admissions- when I was on Wall Street some analysts working for me got rejected at their choice B-schools because the schools felt Wall-Street types were over-represented in their classes. So from where I sit industry can be just as good or better, as far as admissions goes. I'm sure this goes in cycles.</p>
<p>The experience you get there is great in terms of seeing what goes on in big-finance and getting some career direction. But for admissions I'm really not so sure, based on the above. I must defer.</p>