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onion253
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How Regional is Your School? Looking at Job Placement Data Updated on: 29 Apr 2013, 08:36
Originally posted by onion253 on 28 Apr 2013, 12:28.
Last edited by onion253 on 29 Apr 2013, 08:36, edited 1 time in total.
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Hi, I have seen a lot of comments in this forum stating how one US based school is nationally recognized while another school is only recognized regionally. As a non-US citizen, I could not always understand such comments. While they support common perceptions (e.g. Stern having a strong presence in the Northeast), I have always wanted to find out the sources of such claims.

So, I went through the employment reports of top 20 US schools and created a chart showing what portion of students from each school are employed in each region (thankfully schools report regional placement data in almost identical format).

Limitations/Possible mistakes:
- The list does not include Columbia, Haas, and Johnson. Could not find their regional placement data. Please update the file if you can find them.
- In some cases, the percentages do not add up to 100%. This may be due to rounding error.
- I am not familiar with different regions in US. I have followed the definition provided in Tuck's employment report.

Please let me know if anything is wrong.

To moderators: This is my first thread. Not sure where to post this. Please move this thread to right section.
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MBA Job Placement by Region.xlsx [19.84 KiB]
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CobraKai
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How Regional is Your School? Looking at Job Placement Data 28 Apr 2013, 13:08
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Johnson doesn't report geographic stats on its employment report online (for reasons unbeknownst to me), but here are the numbers from a booklet handed out during the admit weekend for the class of 2012:

Metro NYC: 37.7%
Mid-Atlantic: 4.1%
Southeast: 1.4%
Midwest: 5.9%
Southwest: 4.1
West: 15%
Northeast (other than NYC): 17.7%
International: 14.1%
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How Regional is Your School? Looking at Job Placement Data 28 Apr 2013, 14:38
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The Sloan numbers are inaccurate. The most recent figures are listed here: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/cdo/employment- ... ts-mba.php. Also, you can get relatively recent Haas figures here: https://www.haas.berkeley.edu/groups/car ... .html#NINE.
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How Regional is Your School? Looking at Job Placement Data 29 Apr 2013, 08:37
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Thanks for your feedback guys. I have updated the file.
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How Regional is Your School? Looking at Job Placement Data 29 Apr 2013, 09:08
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Great work! what this tells me though, every school is pretty regional. East coast and West coast schools a bit more then others (understandably so, since more MBA jobs are located on the coasts).

BUT, This tells me less about how regional schools are, and more about how regional regions are...

You can get to the Northeast or the West coast from pretty much anywhere, BUT if you plan on working in the Mid-west, South or even Mid-Atlantic post mba, you're best bet is to go to a school in that area.
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How Regional is Your School? Looking at Job Placement Data 29 Apr 2013, 10:04
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highwyre237
Great work!
Show more

Thank you highwyre! I wanted to do something similar with industries and job functions as well. But different schools categorize these in different ways. It will take a lot of effort. Maybe I'll do that in the future.

highwyre237
what this tells me though, every school is pretty regional. East coast and West coast schools a bit more then others (understandably so, since more MBA jobs are located on the coasts).

BUT, This tells me less about how regional schools are, and more about how regional regions are...

You can get to the Northeast or the West coast from pretty much anywhere, BUT if you plan on working in the Mid-west, South or even Mid-Atlantic post mba, you're best bet is to go to a school in that area.
Show more

You have provided a great insight. But this really confuses me. Consider for example, a Stanford graduate wants to work in the South (for family reasons maybe), and it is safe to assume that he/she will be considered competitive against Fuqua/Darden/Goizueta/UNC graduates. So, even if any graduate from a top school wants to work in a region where the presence of their alumni is not strong, they should be able to get employment there.

Maybe the salaries of different regions have something to do with this?
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How Regional is Your School? Looking at Job Placement Data 29 Apr 2013, 10:22
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onion253
highwyre237
what this tells me though, every school is pretty regional. East coast and West coast schools a bit more then others (understandably so, since more MBA jobs are located on the coasts).

BUT, This tells me less about how regional schools are, and more about how regional regions are...

You can get to the Northeast or the West coast from pretty much anywhere, BUT if you plan on working in the Mid-west, South or even Mid-Atlantic post mba, you're best bet is to go to a school in that area.

You have provided a great insight. But this really confuses me. Consider for example, a Stanford graduate wants to work in the South (for family reasons maybe), and it is safe to assume that he/she will be considered competitive against Fuqua/Darden/Goizueta/UNC graduates. So, even if any graduate from a top school wants to work in a region where the presence of their alumni is not strong, they should be able to get employment there.

Show more

I think this has to do with self-selective behavior more than anything. Yes, someone who gets into GSB can land a job ANYWHERE - it just happens that most are drawn to Stanford due to its Bay area location and placement in that region. The same can be said for a school like Goizueta - they draw a lot of interest from students who are interested in staying in the Atlanta or placing in the Southeast.

The logic here is if someone wants to be in a certain region after school, there's something about it they like, so they'd probably prefer to go to school in that region as well. I think the only schools that are exempt from this are HSW. In other words, people who say: "I want to be in LA after I graduate, but I'd like to live in NYC for two years before I do that." are in the strict minority.

And of course there's the "network cycle" if school "A" places most graduates in one region, that's where the network is strongest, and a lot of future graduates will want to end up in that region, so that feeds into a schools "regionality."
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How Regional is Your School? Looking at Job Placement Data 29 Apr 2013, 11:03
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onion253
highwyre237
what this tells me though, every school is pretty regional. East coast and West coast schools a bit more then others (understandably so, since more MBA jobs are located on the coasts).

BUT, This tells me less about how regional schools are, and more about how regional regions are...

You can get to the Northeast or the West coast from pretty much anywhere, BUT if you plan on working in the Mid-west, South or even Mid-Atlantic post mba, you're best bet is to go to a school in that area.

You have provided a great insight. But this really confuses me. Consider for example, a Stanford graduate wants to work in the South (for family reasons maybe), and it is safe to assume that he/she will be considered competitive against Fuqua/Darden/Goizueta/UNC graduates. So, even if any graduate from a top school wants to work in a region where the presence of their alumni is not strong, they should be able to get employment there.


I think this has to do with self-selective behavior more than anything. Yes, someone who gets into GSB can land a job ANYWHERE - it just happens that most are drawn to Stanford due to its Bay area location and placement in that region. The same can be said for a school like Goizueta - they draw a lot of interest from students who are interested in staying in the Atlanta or placing in the Southeast.

The logic here is if someone wants to be in a certain region after school, there's something about it they like, so they'd probably prefer to go to school in that region as well. I think the only schools that are exempt from this are HSW. In other words, people who say: "I want to be in LA after I graduate, but I'd like to live in NYC for two years before I do that." are in the strict minority.

And of course there's the "network cycle" if school "A" places most graduates in one region, that's where the network is strongest, and a lot of future graduates will want to end up in that region, so that feeds into a schools "regionality."
Show more
Spot on. The bolded part above is actually just what I was about to say myself. For example, the Sloan network is strongest in the North East and on the West Coast, so in some ways graduates get funneled there because opportunities are greater (through networking) and because a disproportionately high percentage of one's friends from each class are likely to go there.
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How Regional is Your School? Looking at Job Placement Data 29 Apr 2013, 11:55
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kingfalcon
CobraKai
onion253

You have provided a great insight. But this really confuses me. Consider for example, a Stanford graduate wants to work in the South (for family reasons maybe), and it is safe to assume that he/she will be considered competitive against Fuqua/Darden/Goizueta/UNC graduates. So, even if any graduate from a top school wants to work in a region where the presence of their alumni is not strong, they should be able to get employment there.


I think this has to do with self-selective behavior more than anything. Yes, someone who gets into GSB can land a job ANYWHERE - it just happens that most are drawn to Stanford due to its Bay area location and placement in that region. The same can be said for a school like Goizueta - they draw a lot of interest from students who are interested in staying in the Atlanta or placing in the Southeast.

The logic here is if someone wants to be in a certain region after school, there's something about it they like, so they'd probably prefer to go to school in that region as well. I think the only schools that are exempt from this are HSW. In other words, people who say: "I want to be in LA after I graduate, but I'd like to live in NYC for two years before I do that." are in the strict minority.

And of course there's the "network cycle" if school "A" places most graduates in one region, that's where the network is strongest, and a lot of future graduates will want to end up in that region, so that feeds into a schools "regionality."
Spot on. The bolded part above is actually just what I was about to say myself. For example, the Sloan network is strongest in the North East and on the West Coast, so in some ways graduates get funneled there because opportunities are greater (through networking) and because a disproportionately high percentage of one's friends from each class are likely to go there.
Show more


agreed with Cobrakai and King Falcon.

To add, here's a few interesting pivot tables I threw together with your data, plus the class sizes of each school.

The first table shows the percentage of that MBA market a school makes up... so, lets say you want to work in the northeast, do you have more alumni to reach out to from a large midwestern school like Booth, or a small Northeastern school like Tuck?

(I know I know, Tuck alumni tend to be more responsive... if someone wants to put a metric around the response rate of an alumni base and add it into this calculation go for it...)

the second pretty much rolls the data from your table into regions, how regional is a certain region of schools?

As you can see, 57% of employees in the south went to school in the south, 65% of workers in the midwest, went to school in the midwest, while only 40% of workers in the west went to school in the west and 52% of workers in the east went to school in the east (but keep in mind 33% of all students went to school in the NE, see table below)

Row Labels-------% of Students
Mid-Atlantic-----------18.26%
Midwest---------------23.36%
Northeast-------------33.19%
South------------------11.76%
West-------------------13.42%
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onion253
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How Regional is Your School? Looking at Job Placement Data 29 Apr 2013, 12:12
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highwyre237
agreed with Cobrakai and King Falcon.

To add, here's a few interesting pivot tables I threw together with your data, plus the class sizes of each school.

The first table shows the percentage of that MBA market a school makes up... so, lets say you want to work in the northeast, do you have more alumni to reach out to from a large midwestern school like Booth, or a small Northeastern school like Tuck?

(I know I know, Tuck alumni tend to be more responsive... if someone wants to put a metric around the response rate of an alumni base and add it into this calculation go for it...)

the second pretty much rolls the data from your table into regions, how regional is a certain region of schools?

As you can see, 57% of employees in the south went to school in the south, 65% of workers in the midwest, went to school in the midwest, while only 40% of workers in the west went to school in the west and 52% of workers in the east went to school in the east (but keep in mind 33% of all students went to school in the NE, see table below)

Row Labels-------% of Students
Mid-Atlantic-----------18.26%
Midwest---------------23.36%
Northeast-------------33.19%
South------------------11.76%
West-------------------13.42%
Show more

Really nice work!
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onion253
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How Regional is Your School? Looking at Job Placement Data 29 Apr 2013, 12:18
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Also agree with CobraKai. It seems like a self fulfilling prophecy.