I'd like to know of the source of your information (esp if you have any direct links you'd care to share). I am from Australia and I can tell you that this salary information just sounds plain wrong. The top Australian programs are AGSM (now called ASB) and Melbourne Business School. Neither of these schools lead to an immediate post MBA salary of 150K USD. In fact Australia is a country where MBA is not considered a such a big deal in terms of getting you executive positions. I suspect that the 150K salary is probably an outlier where the MBA student was probably already making over 100K before starting the program. Only a few top MBA programs (e.g. H/S/W/LBS/Insead etc) have a true brand "presence" here and often Australian students from these schools return to Australia to pursue consulting or banking careers. But even these folks don't receive 150K USD straight away as an Associate.

Australia (and Sydney where I am from) is an outstanding place to live. Quality of life is far superior to what I have experienced in London and Chicago (Maybe a little slower). But unfortunately it is isolated from the world especially if you are interested in Finance. Furthermore don't be deluded into believing Australians rarely work over 50 hrs a week. The true figure is more like 35-40 hours . However, for post MBA type jobs, you will still do the post MBA style hours. Finance and Consulting both demand and receive their pound of flesh. Industry life OTOH is pretty good.


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Thanks for sharing the link

Let ys take a look at GDP (purchase power parity) per capita:

US - $47,123
Australia - $39,699
UK - $34,920
European Union - $30,388
Russia - $15,836

What do I mean is that salaries in a given country tend to correlate with GDP per capita.
Figures do look so bad for Australia.
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Well the graphs certainly look good. I was further amazed by the Chemical industry average remuneration of $350K !! I suppose it is a combined effect of a strong economy and a strong Australian dollar that skews a 130K AUD job towards 140K USD - whereas in the past (at least when I was still in Australia) the same 130K job would be closer to a 100K USD job. When and if the AUD falls back to a more historical average of 0.75 USD, the average salary figure wont look quite so good in USD terms.

Some of this is also a function of a very small class size for both schools - only 45 in Melbourne Business School and something similar in AGSM (http://www.mbs.edu/go/degree-programs/m ... ss-profile). So when that 2% of Chemical industry average salary may well be just one person who hits the salary jackpot.

If you are seriously considering going to Australia post MBA, then also factor in the Superannuation costs. Any base salary figure also has a 10% mandatory superannuation component that you never quite get to see (it goes straight to a pension plan).

@Pkit - The GMAT stuff is less important because the emphasis is very much on strong prior work experiences. Note that the average age is 30 with 7 years of WE. The dramatic post MBA jump is probably not quite so dramatic if you took away the internationals in the class and just did a calculation for Australians.
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Amazed by the employment statistics mentioned about the school