MBA programs' average salaries 5 or 10 years after graduation. https://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactiv ... _pay_2009/

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Average MBA Salaries Years After Graduation

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run4run

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13 Feb 2010, 13:34

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sorry to not have a link or anything but I remember reading a while back on BW Forums that the breakeven for Stanford was just a little over 3 years and the rest of the top 7 was all under 5.

This was using there average salary before going and there average salary after while subtracting for tuition and living expenses.

junker

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16 Feb 2010, 08:59

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My post earlier in this thread - anecdotal evidence about the three Booth graduates I know is borne out by these BW rankings =>

Look at the horrific placement numbers at Kellogs, Booth, and MIT....

https://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/10 ... ment/2.htm

DrSatisfaction

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16 Feb 2010, 09:59

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junker

wharton, ross, johnson, fuqua, and uncc's numbers are even worse than those. ouch. tough economy for mba's. hope it looks up in the next couple of yrs.

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17 Feb 2010, 09:06

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How accurate is this data? Why is ross salary so low even with their high placement in consulting?

I see vanderbilt is averaging higher salary than Ross, is it because of Vand's higher % of alumni in finance?

Edit: Okay, I read about how the data are collected, its by no mean accurate. But does support a general trend on rankings and pay.

Architect

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17 Feb 2010, 21:53

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junker

wharton, ross, johnson, fuqua, and uncc's numbers are even worse than those. ouch. tough economy for mba's. hope it looks up in the next couple of yrs.

Wow... this is very disconcerting... I've accepted the offer of admission to Cornell (Johnson) class of 2012, but these numbers seriously cause me panic. With the average salary down to only 95k and only three fourths of the class finding jobs at all, it seems that it's not such a safe bet afterall. I would expect that things will be better by 2012, but who knows how much better really? Makes the concept of borrowing over 100k and having little or no income for two years seem... like it might not be so smart afterall. 65k per year (my current job) is not great, but at least it pays the bills (and is better than NO job, which is what a quarter of the last Johnson class found themselves with 3 months after graduation).

JinJJa

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27 Feb 2010, 18:23

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junker

Extactly my point. I've been struggling with this for couple of months now.

I think I have a shot at both Booth and Kelloggs (only PT, not FT though). It'd require me to drive 200 miles to Chicago every weekend for 3 years, spend 50K+ out of pocket (rest employer pays). And really whats the outcome?

I know three guys from where I work, who graduated from Booth (PT) in 2007:
One got into a consulting firm, moved to Texas, got laid off, and is back as an Engineer at one of our factories.
Second guy got hired into a top position in a small technology company, got laid off, unemployed - is now running his own "strategy consulting".
Third guy is a risk analyst with a small hedge fund company.

Not a stellar show so far..... Either FT guys have way more advantage than PTimers, or things are not as rosy as these private B Schools make it seem.

You make a good point. Note that the Bush years 2000's would be viewed as a "lost decade" by many US economists. The decade actually saw a decline in real wages of an average American by $2000/yr. I believe that is the only decade, even if you include the Depression era 1930s, in which that has happened.

It is interesting to note that the Booth PT graduates of 2007 seem to have had nice initial jobs after graduation but their career seemed to have dipped after the recent economic decline. That would not be uncommon for any MBA (FT or otherwise) graduates these days. The times are tough and many careers have suffered because of it.

carlos1

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16 Mar 2010, 16:07

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Wow really makes my decision to go to medical school a decade ago look not too shabby. I had always been a little envious of my friends who went on to get MBAs. They were pulling six figures while I was in my residency slaving away 100 hrs a week on minimum wage. But as an attending now, I don't envy my MBA friends' lack of job stability, nor their high-cost living arrangements in NYC. In the long run, it seems most physicians (even many family doctors) do just as well as the MBAs. My base compensation as an orthopedic surgeon (after exorbitant malpractice premiums) is over $400k, still on the lower end of the median compensation for my specialty and more than double the 20+ year median salary of top tier MBA graduates. I get the added perk of being able to find a job in pretty much any part of the country (very convenient when you have a working spouse).

I guess the adage "Do what you love and you'll have no regrets" is really true.

Case2010

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16 Mar 2010, 18:15

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carlos1

Hey carlos, I am not sure I get your point though. It appears you are still somewhat, at least a tiny bit, envious of your friends who took the MBA route :lol:

. The adage you referenced is very true but lets talk fact, shall we? As an orthopedic surgeon, I assume you are were very bright amongst your peers. Your classmates who were of comparable caliber and got thier MBA's a decade ago are probabaly V.P's and the like in thier fields and were probabaly not affected much by the recent economic mire. So am sure that if we compare apples-to-apples, most of them are probably doing just fine. Besides, not all of then live in NYC. For all we know, they are spread accross the globe directing our interdependent global economy. In addition, money is hardly the only yardstick to measure success. While you spent 4 years in med school and countless others "slaving away 100 hrs a week on minimum wage" --essentially spending the crux of your youth in medical training--, those inclined probably comfortably started familes and spent valuable time with thier spouses and kids during thier formative years (you cant beat that if stuff like that interests you :-D

). And lets face it, many family doctors and even internal medicine folks find it very hard to make ends meet comfortably without working countless hours (and this, after thier multi-year medical training). I guess my point is that we are happy that are doing very well as a surgeon and it's very kuul if you enjoy your work but the costs of your path ($$, youth, lost wages etc) is not for everyone. Indeed, there are no regrets in doing what you love...

junker

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17 Mar 2010, 06:38

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The interesting thing about case2010 - who's poking holes in the doctor's case is :
1. He's not yet an MBA (Kelley 2012 ? ). BTW - I am starting at at Kelley too (E-MBA 2013

)
2. As for the lifestyle of MBAs - read threads in the career forum. Consulting and Finance seem to suck the living life out of the guys - atrocious , especialy in the early days.

Case2010

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17 Mar 2010, 07:28

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junker

The interesting thing about case2010 - who's poking holes in the doctor's case is :
1. He's not yet an MBA (Kelley 2012 ? ). BTW - I am starting at at Kelley too (E-MBA 2013

)
2. As for the lifestyle of MBAs - read threads in the career forum. Consulting and Finance seem to suck the living life out of the guys - atrocious , especialy in the early days.

Ha! I was just arguing from the other side, facts-based. No one said any specific career track is the best. They all have their merits and demerits. We all have to do what we like and go as far as we are comfortable with. Some of my college colleagues are babysitters now and they seems to be having an amazing time than I've ever had in my so-called "professional" jobs :lol:

BTW, what happened to your Booth/Kellogg PT plans? Good to hear you are gonna join the Kelley community. :-D

Yup, I am headed there this fall

junker

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17 Mar 2010, 07:55

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Hay - Case2010: Did not apply to Booth/Kelloggs - chickened out when I factored in the fees and the 3 hour commute to downtown Chicago.

On the other hand, employer buses us to Bloomington campus for the EMBA and pays the tuition - so took the easy way out. May live to regret it later. Hope to bump into you there.

Have fun.

carlos1

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17 Mar 2010, 10:02

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Case2010

Hey carlos, I am not sure I get your point though. It appears you are still somewhat, at least a tiny bit, envious of your friends who took the MBA route :lol:

Life doesn't work that way, case2010. It's very possible that some will become VPs, but it's difficult to generalize like that. Once you get to my age you'll realize what a crapshoot all of it really is, and while there are plenty of faults in medicine, I believe it is still far more meritocratic than most other fields. I went to MIT for undergrad, I would say all of my close buddies are of comparable caliber to myself, and probably more ambitious. Yet I would wager less than a tenth make as much money as I do now. The one VP I know never went to business school.

The sky is the limit, until you hit that wall.

I certainly have no confidence in believing that had I chose business school, I would be pulling in a cool half million a decade later. I think we often over-estimate our opportunity costs, I certainly did during my 20s. But looking back, the costs weren't that high, I married another med student in school and was able to establish a family just fine with zero assets (at least I had no money to blow on booze and clubs like my MBA peers). We pooled our resources during residency and lived like any other new family with two budding professionals. You manage with the cards you have.

My point is do what you love and don't let others (like me) lure you off your plot of grass. But don't assume you'll be good at everything or be just as successful as a peer. Most lucrative fields involve a significant quantity of luck. There's no guarantee or entitlement.

DrSatisfaction

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24 Mar 2010, 12:53

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this is an interesting discussion on med vs. biz. and heck we can throw law in there too probably at some point.

my best friend did his undergrad at stanford, then med school at northwestern, and is now doing his internship for radio oncology.

i did my undergrad at university of toronto, then worked for a bunch of yrs, and i'm going into my mba next yr.

basically, in terms of cost, he spent a fortune at stanford. i spent less than 1 yr of his tuition in my combined undergrad education. i'm expecting to spend about half of his med school tuition on my mba. so far, mba is much cheaper.

then, let's consider hours and quality of life, while he's in med school slaving away and paying about 200k for tuition, i was out working, having a good time, and making 40k a yr when i first started to my current salary. now that he's done med school, he's out making about 50k or so as an intern and still working a billion hrs a week, whereas i'm already in a comfortable position working 35 hrs a wk (and sometimes even less) while making almost twice as much as he does. while it's true that ibanking has some insane hours, that only applies to the analyst level, and to a small degree, the associate level. yet, there are other jobs such as sales and trading, private equity, hedge funds, etc. that require less hours than the pure ibanking machine. so i'm skipping the real grunt analyst work by doing advertising before my mba, and then afterwards, i'll jump into some sort of a banking career at the associate level where my hours will still be much better than my friend's, and i'll be paid at several times his intern wages.

in 4 more yrs, when he's done his internship, i'll be 3 yrs out of my mba. he'll be making 300k or so i guess, but i won't be far behind in ibanking or S&T...3rd yr associates still make 200k+ all inclusive at minimum. given that i want to work in asia, there's also the issue of less taxes, which means i'll most likely have a bigger take home pay than he does. but for the sake of comparing careers in north america, we'll skip asia.

from there on out, it comes down to future earnings potential. assuming he progresses down the same road and eventually opens his own practice, his top level is roughly 1 mil (that's what he estimates). yet down my road, once you get past the vp level and into director/md/higher roles, your earning power is going to be much higher than 1 mil. of course this depends on luck, but so does my friend's plan of eventually opening his own business as a radio oncologist. so no matter what, there are risks to be taken and luck involved. nothing is absolutely safe.

from everything i've seen. MD is definitely the safest and highest avg paying job out there. then comes law, with a big less safety, but a bit higher upside (especially in corporate, intellectual property, patent, etc.). then comes consulting, which has a similar risk level and career progression to law. then banking, which is even higher risk but higher reward. at the very top of the risk scale is trading, hedge funds, etc. where your risk is through the roof, but as a director or higher, your 1 yr bonus can get up to 8 or 9 figures if you're lucky.

hence, for me, bieng the risk taker that i am, business is obviously the best way to go. for those who are more risk averse, medicine is great. plus, you can also always say you're adding value to society, whereas as a banker/trader, i'm just a greedy blood sucking vampire on society.

carlos1

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30 Mar 2010, 09:30

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DrSatisfaction

Too much wishful thinking is what got us this recession.

The attraction of medicine will always be "a bird in hand is worth two in the bush."

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30 Mar 2010, 10:10

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DrSatisfaction makes some valid points about the disparity of incomes and more importantly about a services business vs a product business. As a doctor one sells services and the maximum payoff is capped. As a business owner, sky is the limit. Whether this is fair or not I wont comment - to me medicine remains one of the most respected professions and I always look at doctors who take the plunge of b-school with mixture of respect and curiousity. What is unfair is the staggering costs of med-school - I mean 300K in fees alone ??? That AFTER being selected among some of the smartest people :shock:

Ridiculous !!!

DrSatisfaction - I must say your career trajectory sounds almost too perfect. There are a few roadblocks here and there before you hit MD level ...

Case2010

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30 Mar 2010, 10:27

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I agree that Drsatisfaction's trajectry is a little too perfect but I must note that it was funny though...

DrSatisfaction

... you can also always say you're adding value to society, whereas as a banker/trader, i'm just a greedy blood sucking vampire on society.

That got me laughing off my behind...

carlos1

Too much wishful thinking is what got us this recession.

The attraction of medicine will always be "a bird in hand is worth two in the bush."

However carlos1, as I noted in my little exchanges with you (above), "It appears you are still somewhat, at least a tiny bit, envious of your friends who took the MBA route :lol:

. " While we all agree that there are ills in every trade, your vibe suggests that a part of you wish you are B-school bound :lol:

so you are out to convince yourself that you took the right route....Otherwise why are so bent on juxtaposing the two tracks in black/white format. We all can agree that such a dichotomy is not true. Grey areas abound....

DrSatisfaction

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06 Apr 2010, 08:53

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oh yes i'm totally going under the "idealized career trajectory" assumption with my argument here. however, i'm also giving my friend's medical career path a perfect trajectory too. so i'm saying "assuming both of us get what we want, this is how the situation plays out..."

obviously if we want to assign risks, his profession carries a much lower risk than mine, and thus the attraction towards a MD.

however one of the funny things he told me about his entire class is that probably more than 90% of his classmates (besides the ones who either want to save the world or got into neurosurgery/dermatology/whatever elitist specialization they wanted) hated their med school lives and the future they picked for themselves. also, most of them, if given the opportunity to go back, would have picked another career. to me, it seems at least mba's are much happier with the career choices and in life in general.

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16 Apr 2010, 14:25

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anu1979

Case2010

muffeebrown, given your extensive MBA alumni network :-D

, are you friends with a Kelley alumni? What are they saying about the strengths of the Kelley program/brand?

Any thoughts, anyone?

Ha! I think the only reason I know so many MBAs and doctors is that my parents are Indian and they're very popular educational options for Indians, obviously. That said, I don't necessarily know how happy I would be about approaching any of them for help unless they're alumni (from whatever school I choose), mainly because it makes me slightly uncomfortable that my parents' friends would know so much about me. Also, I found in law school that the whole South Asian network was on the unhelpful and downright cruel side of things and I'm kind of burned (example, Georgetown law grad my parents insist I suck up to before I went to school tells me that 99% of people fail at law school, that I was doomed to be a failure and not to bother. No such thing occurs and I am productively employed prior to graduation. I proceed to develop life-long grudge and remind my parents of this incident anytime they bring up networking with any of their friends/friends' kids).

Alas, I don't know any Indiana Kelley alumni.

HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHA.....sooo true, I will have to agree that attempts at networking/mentoring in some of the South Asian community is broderline intimidation & regurgitation of obvious information with a splash of arrogance. I can attest to that for engineering (non-computer/electrical/IT) side of things. I was trying to do an informational interview with a family acquaintance, when all he could talk about was his undergrad achievement, 25 yrs. experience, his $30M project and how I'd have to be like him to succeed. No thanks!

Three years into the working world, I had the burning desire to call him up and talk about my lead role in a much-much bigger project, but since that would leave no difference between us, I didn't call him afterall.

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27 Apr 2010, 21:01

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DrSatisfaction

junker

wharton, ross, johnson, fuqua, and uncc's numbers are even worse than those. ouch. tough economy for mba's. hope it looks up in the next couple of yrs.

I am in the same boat if not worse for the Cornell class of 2012. I am currently making 80k a year and will probably get promoted in 1-2 year making close to 6 figures just from my full time job alone. I had been spending all my time on the MBA application process and didn't really spend much time on my side business which can bring in another 10-20k easily a year if I really put some time into it.

An MBA education has always been my dream but I really don't know if it will ever make sense to me financially or not especially with this high unemployment rate. My current career is a lot safer then the career I am looking to enter after my MBA. I have 3 unemployed/retired family members to support and graduating without a job is not an option for me.

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08 May 2010, 09:12

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I think some people are missing the biggest point in all of this...Those salaries are not what people in school NOW will make 20 years out, they are the salaries of people who graduated 20 years ago are making. Those people probably made 75,000 out of school in 1990. The average lifetime salary is also dubious because there are so many variables, such as someone who takes a job with less pay/responsibility to raise a family, or merely the industry that person is in. That all being said, the MBA I feel is too general of a degree to suit all industries, which is why you are seeing small targeted and elite masters programs for specific industries gain ground on the elite MBAs, for example, in Real Estate. Unless I wanted to be in finance or consulting, I would probably skip an MBA, and look for something more specific.

I guess another way to decide if the ROI is worth it is to decide how not having an advanced degree limits your options later on.