According to new Bloomberg Businessweek research, graduates from top business schools (which are also the most expensive programs) earn more straight out of school and down the road than do grads from lower ranked, less expensive schools. And they don't just make a little more…but a lot.
Robert Dammon, CMU Tepper associate dean and professor, explains the price-wage connection: "The kinds of students that the best schools attract are going to get the highest-paying jobs."
Paul R. Dorf, managing director of the consulting firm, Compensation Resources, adds, "The cream-of-the-crop companies hire the cream-of-the-crop grads."
Top-ranked b-schools generally offer the most expensive programs and generally churn out the highest paid graduates. Harvard Business School, for example, has the most expensive MBA program, and the best paid alumni.
PayScale, a salary-comparison company, recently evaluated salary data of 23,000 MBA graduates from Bloomberg Businessweek's top 45 American business schools.
Their data shows that on average, MBAs from top programs make $2.5 million (base-pay plus bonuses) over the course of 20 years in a single industry. HBS alumni make closer to $4 million, while alumni from lower ranked programs (but still in the top 45) like Iowa Tippie, make less than half of that.
Another interesting comparison between the higher ranked and lower ranked programs was the growth of salary over the two-decade period. Graduates from Yale SOM, for example, were awarded with extremely high starting salaries, but then experienced only small increases over the following 20 years. Grads from University of Connecticut's business school, on the other hand, received lower starting salaries that more than doubled over that same 20-year period.
Below are the top median salaries earned after less than 2 years out of b-school and then the estimated career total for a 20-year long career:
| BBW Rank | B-School | Median Pay, Less than 2 Years | Estimated Career Total |
| 2 | Harvard Business School | $133,000 | $3,867,903 |
| 4 | Wharton | 137,000 | $3,491,371 |
| 7 | Columbia Business School | 119,000 | $3,349,669 |
| 6 | Stanford GSB | 123,000 | 3,327, 145 |
| 12 | Dartmouth Tuck | 124,000 | 3,146,031 |
| 3 | Northwestern Kellogg | 117,000 | 3,085,680 |
| 9 | MIT Sloan | 121,000 | 3,031,132 |
| 1 | Chicago Booth | 111,000 | 2,970,437 |
| 10 | UC Berkeley Haas | 110,000 | 2,960,527 |
| 13 | NYU Stern | 106,000 | 2,918,748 |
Related Accepted.com Resources:
- B-School Zones
- The Rankings: An Accepted.com Special Report
- Forbes ROI MBA Rankings for 2010
- BusinessWeek's Top 10 Undergraduate Business Schools with the Best Returns on Investment
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