If you’re applying to a graduate business school with the hope that an MBA degree will catapult you into an interesting and well-paying occupation, it’s important to compare the employment statistics at various programs, experts suggest.
Heather Byrne, managing director of the Career Development Office with the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor, says MBA hopefuls should look at a B-school’s job placement figures to gauge the career opportunities of its graduates. “I think looking at the employment profile is always a good place to start,” she says.
The compensation information submitted by 126 ranked graduate business schools for the U.S. News 2019 B est Business School rankings shows that there are two types of post-MBA jobs which tend to be especially lucrative: consulting and general management positions. The average salary for MBA grads in 2017 for each of these two occupations exceeded $95,000. Recent MBA alumni who found jobs in these two fields typically earned at least $5,000 more than their peers who worked in other fields, such as operations and information systems.
Both consulting and general management jobs involve analyzing a business’s strengths and shortcomings in order to create a compelling corporate strategy. MBA grads with consulting jobs specifically provide business advice to companies and corporations that seek to benefit from an outsider’s guidance. In contrast, MBA grads in general management roles are company leaders who help create, refine and execute that organization’s business plan.
[Read: See Which MBA Programs Lead to the Best Jobs, Salaries.]
One common type of general management position among MBA grads is a leadership rotation or leadership development program at a corporation, where the employee has the chance to gain management experience in multiple departments within a short time span. The idea behind this type of job is to give a company’s new MBA hires a holistic view of what their company does, so they can make a positive impact as managers and are prepared to become C-suite executives.
Consulting jobs often offer a similar breadth of experience, since these jobs typically include a variety of assignments, including projects that touch on vastly disparate business disciplines, such as finance and human resources.
Shaifali Aggarwal, founder and CEO of the Ivy Groupe admissions consulting firm, says that a school’s placement rate in general management and consulting can be a good indication of whether the school provides a pathway into one of these two professions.
“If a student is interested in consulting after graduation, then schools that have a higher percentage of graduates entering consulting are likely preparing their students well and have strong recruitment from consulting firms,” Aggarwal wrote in an email. “Similarly, if a student is interested in general management after graduation, then schools that have a higher percentage of graduates assuming general management roles are likely doing a good job preparing students in that field and have strong recruitment from companies offering general management roles.”
Below are charts which identify both the 10 B-schools that sent the largest proportion of their 2017 MBA grads into consulting jobs, and the 10 schools which sent the largest percentage into general management jobs.
Stephen Rakas, executive director of the Masters Careers Center at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business in Pittsburgh, cautions MBA hopefuls to remember that the percentage of an MBA class that is placed within a specific discipline isn’t necessarily the be-all and end-all indicator of whether the school offers good career prospects in that discipline. The two factors that really matter, he says, are both the amount of and competitiveness of on-campus recruitment.
When a significant proportion of an MBA program’s students are going into a specific field, that generally means that there are many recruiters in that discipline coming to campus, but it also means that there will be many applicants vying for jobs in that field, Rakas says.
[Read: 3 Questions to Ask About MBA Career Services.]
U.S. News data show that MBA grads who became general managers or consultants weren’t necessarily paid better if they attended B-schools with a higher percentage of grads assuming these roles.
For instance, at two of the 10 schools where MBA grads were most likely to land a consulting job, grads who were hired as consultants had an average salary that was below the norm for consultants with MBA degrees. The salary numbers are even more jarring at the 10 B-schools where grads are most likely to become general managers. At five of those 10 schools, the average general manager salary among 2017 grads was below the norm among all B-schools.
However, there are some B-schools which have both a high percentage of MBA grads hired as consultants and unusually high salaries among those grads, such as the Yale School of Management. More than half of Yale’s MBA grads find consulting jobs, and the average salary among these grads is $126,746, which is nearly $25,000 above the typical salary for newly minted MBAs who pursue consulting careers.
Sukhjot Basi, the CEO of BankYogi.com, a startup company that helps consumers discover if they qualify for free insurance, warns that general management and consulting positions at prestigious companies tend to be extraordinarily competitive. For this reason, Basi, who earned his MBA from University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, says it’s ideal to attend a B-school where those companies have hired in the past.
Basi urges MBA hopefuls to identify B-schools with a track record of job placement success in general management and consulting by looking at the LinkedIn profiles of people who are doing that type for work for influential companies.
[See: 10 Business Schools That Trained Fortune 500 CEOs.]
“They should decide on the companies they would like to join and visit websites of those companies to see where the executive leadership has studied,” Basi wrote in an email.
Carlos Castelán, the managing director of the retail and consumer goods consulting firm The Navio Group, who earned his MBA from Harvard Business School, says that both general management and consulting gigs are a great way to kick off a post-MBA career.
“So many MBAs decide to enter general management or consulting right after business school because — pay aside — it’s a great stepping stone for a person’s career in that these roles can lead to more career options,” Castelán wrote in an email.
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20 MBA Programs That Often Send Grads Into Lucrative Fields originally appeared on usnews.com
