Why is Darden's Tech salary so low?

Question

Hi everyone, I spent a while looking at each top school's Employment Report. I am most interested in Tech (likely product management) so I compared average salary numbers for each school. Stanford is the only school with an average tech salary of $135,000. All of the following schools have a median salary in Tech of exactly $130,000:
- Harvard
- Wharton
- Booth
- Kellogg
- MIT
- Duke
- UCLA
- Berkeley
- Yale
- Dartmouth
- Carnegie Mellon

Here's the next tier down:
- Ross ($122,650)
- Darden ($122,615)
- Cornell ($122,037)
- NYU Stern ($121,500)

What's the deal with this disparity? It seems that Tech is massively undervaluing Darden, Ross, Cornell, NYU. Why? What's going on here? Would love to hear everyone's thoughts.

ved09 · Answer

You have the answer in your question itself. You are comparing salaries of top 10-12 ranked colleges with slightly lower ranked colleges. There is obviously going to vary a bit. 
Also if your findings are accurate, 10-15k $$ annually is not a huge disparity. Thats roughly $1000 a month.

ArtVandaley · Answer

Yeah exactly. It's not that big a difference.

Besides, probably for some roles,it may even remain same

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Classof2022 · Answer

vedang09  That is not sufficient. The rankings of Darden and Ross are higher than or equivalent to some of the $130,000 schools like Carnegie Mellon, Duke, UCLA. UCLA can be given a pass because it's based on the West coast. So, we have yet to arrive at a clear answer.

ved09 · Answer

I think Souvik has given you a detailed answer in the same question for Ross. So that should cover your doubt to much extent. 
And to again emphasize on the difference of $$ 10k, I don't think that's actually a big disparity as such when we are discussing $100k+ salaries.

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kromay · Answer

As some people already said the difference is not huge. Darden is a small program, so a couple people might drive the average both ways.

However, Darden does not send a lot of people into Tech. This might also be the reason. By "Tech" I mean true tech jobs. On the paper Darden sends like 15-20% of students into Tech, but it's not really tech from my point of view.

A lot of my classmates join Google, Amazon and Microsoft on marketing/HR/finance/ops positions. Very very few people are going into PM roles. Specifically at Google it's pretty much impossible to get a PM job out of Darden. MSFT does not even hire. Facebook doesn't as well. 
So the only PM role you can get is Amazon, Wallmart and some smaller companies such as Autodesk for example.

As the PM role is paid better than a marketing role, I think that the salary is driven down by the Marketing students, who get paid at tech firms about $110.

Generally if you get a PM job out of Darden you'll be paid exact same salary as Stanford/HBS grad. Salaries and roles are pretty standardized. And it's about $140-150 fixed.

This school is one of the best in the world for consulting. It's also pretty good for banking. But not really for technical PM roles.

bb · Answer

Why is Darden's Tech salary so low?

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