As today’s 5 p.m. Round 2 deadline approaches, are you furiously putting the finishing touches on your application to the Tuck School of Business? The school’s most recent career statistics suggest that the effort you put into gaining admission to Tuck should more than pay off when it comes time to look for a job.
Late last month, the school shared details about where the Tuck Class of 2015 graduates have landed—and with a staggering 99 percent of them securing job offers within three months of graduation, it made for a record-breaking year. Add to that the fact that median base salaries jumped by eight percent, to $125,000, and the Tuck Career Development Office (CDO) can certainly feel good about the work it’s doing.
“It’s a good year,” Jonathan Masland, CDO executive director, said modestly in an article on the Tuck website. “The secret to it is that everyone in our office gets to know each student so we can connect them with the right knowledge and people for their chosen career path,” he added.
Drilling down into the career stats reveals that the overall distribution of students by business sector and industry remains much the same as it was last year. More than a third (34 percent) of Tuck’s 2015 grads headed into consulting roles, down just slightly from last year’s 35 percent. Industry giants McKinsey & Company, Bain & Company and the Boston Consulting Group snapped up 43 students, or 18 percent of the overall class.
The financial services sector drew 24 percent of the class—the second-largest slice of the employment pie. These included jobs in investment banking, investment management, private equity and venture capital.
Tech followed not far behind, with firms including Microsoft, Google and Amazon hiring 18 percent of graduates. The growth in tech jobs coming out of Tuck—as well as many other MBA programs—has been significant in recent years. Six or seven years ago, less than 10 percent of Tuck graduates sought jobs in the technology sector, the school notes. Masland credits the increases not merely to strength in tech hiring, but also to resources and opportunities the school offers to students interested in tech careers. One example is the Silicon Valley Boot Camp, an event organized by the CDO each year that lets incoming students explore tech-related career opportunities while networking with employers and alumni in the industry.
Companies in the retail and consumer package goods (CPG) sectors wooed more Tuck graduates than they have in the past, 10 percent of the latest class, up from seven the year before. One such graduate, Juan Giovaneli, took a position at Colgate-Palmolive, successfully using his time at Tuck to transition from corporate communications to marketing. Today he is an assistant brand manager at the huge CPG firm, completing a rotational program that will expose him to various different parts of the business.
Beyond the efforts of the CDO, Tuck graduates also credit the strength of the Tuck alumni network for their successful career searches. Another student, Erica Johnston, chose Tuck for its strength in general management and marketing, hoping to transition from a job in manufacturing into a career she could be passionate about in the food industry. (Food allergies meant that all her life she’d had to pay close attention to what she eats.)
Guided by the CDO, she connected with a Tuck alumna, Lauren Tankersley, MBA’07, who helped arrange a summer internship for her in Denver working for WhiteWave Foods, the maker of Silk soy milk, where Tankersley is a marketing director. The power of the Tuck alumni network didn’t stop there. Another alumna, Sue Allon (MBA ’89)—who is a member of the Tuck Board of Overseers and lives in Denver—extended an offer to Johnston to live at her house for the summer and use her extra car. “I was just blown away,” Johnston said in the article on the Tuck website. “To have a place to call home for the summer that was rent free, and a family to live with, it was just a wonderful experience.”
