MBA Career Strategy

Wondering what kind of pay day you can expect if you are among the select 6 percent of applicants who gain admission to Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB)? Are you sitting down? Perhaps you should be, because the school’s 2017 employment report—released today—reveals record-breaking salaries for the third year in a row. On average, last year’s graduates, now in their first year of post-MBA work, are pulling down an annual base salary of $144,455—a $4,000 increase over last year’s all-time high. (Median base compensation was $140,000, also besting last year’s by about $4,000.) But it doesn’t Read more

Sponsored Content We recently spoke with Jeff McNish, assistant dean of career development at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. McNish joined Darden to lead its Career Development Center in 2016 and hit the ground running. An expert in higher education and careers who most recently served as head of the career center at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School, McNish and his team are devoted to student success, cultivating an individually tailored approach that begins before new students even step foot on Darden grounds. Clear Admit: What role does Read more

Columbia Business School (CBS), together with Columbia Engineering, yesterday announced a new full-time Master of Science in Business Analytics degree. Distinct from CBS’s MBA degree, the new program features a three-semester curriculum and is really geared toward students who want to learn the modeling techniques and data science tools that help businesses use data to influence decision making. A unique capstone project will serve as a key element of the new program, through which students will work with actual clients and relevant data sets to put the skills they’ve learned to work helping Read more

Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business today became the latest leading business school to share details from its Class of 2017 MBA Employment Report, revealing an all-time high average first-year base salary and signing bonus of $158,194. To get there, the mean base salary climbed to $127,986 from last year’s $123,934, and the mean signing bonus increased 4 percent to $30,208. The median salary and signing bonus, meanwhile, remained constant year over year, at $125,000 and $25,000 respectively. Eighty-five percent of the Class of 2017 received a signing bonus, down from 87 percent of the Class of 2016. Strong Read more

In November, Clear Admit was pleased to partner with Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business to offer an informative webinar entitled “How to Define Your Career Path.” The webinar was led by Kelley Executive Director of Graduate Career Services Eric Johnson. An interactive Q&A session followed, featuring thoughtful queries from many participants. Johnson, himself a Kelley MBA graduate, offered a lot of helpful advice for any aspiring MBA student seeking to make the most of their career. He first talked about the importance of really knowing yourself—in particular, understanding your skills, interests, and values. For skills, he suggests Read more

No surprise: Georgetown MBAs are making bank! According to the most recent employment report from the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business, the average starting salary for graduates was $112,501, which is a 4 percent increase from the previous year. “Every year, we deepen our commitment to applying a personalized approach to our students’ job searches, and every year, the results exceed our expectations,” Doreen Amorosa, associate dean and managing director of the MBA Career Center, said. “From the expanded and customized approaches to the job search in the MBA Career Read more

A record one in four—25 percent—of graduates from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management Class of 2017 headed off into jobs in the technology field, according to the school’s most recent employment report, released earlier this month. That’s up from 22 percent last year and just 15 percent the year before and echoes a trend at many leading business schools this year. Amazon hired 32 Kellogg grads, making it the third largest recruiter in 2017, behind only McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group (BCG). But Amazon was far from the only tech firm Read more

NYU Stern School of Business earlier this month shared highlights from its Class of 2017 MBA Employment Report, revealing that Amazon hired more Stern graduates than any other company. It marked the first time that a technology company topped the school’s list of leading employers and is reflective of an overall trend of increasing numbers of Stern MBA graduates heading into technology. In the past five years, technology placements have more than doubled, and they represented 16.8 percent of all hires last year—up from 10 percent the year before. Amazon was followed by Deloitte (No. 2), J.P. Read more

Sponsored Content A career in the finance industry is often sought after by MBA graduates. After all, few other industries offer a mean starting salary of $123,259, plus bonuses of $42,175 and other guaranteed compensation up to $35,278. (That’s a total first-year salary of more than $200,000). At Cornell University’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, finance is a core program and is woven into every aspect, from faculty research to curriculum, immersion programs, competitions, and more. Thirty-two percent of its 2016 MBA class found jobs in the financial services industry. Read more

These days, it seems like everyone and their mother is on Facebook—no, really, your mom sent me a friend request last week. Your family vacation looked like a blast! As more and more people subscribe to the undisputed king of social media, Facebook seems to hire more and more MBAs to continue to move the company forward into the future. Read more

Though it has been almost a decade since the global financial crisis of 2008, investment banking and the financial services industry still aren’t the same. Overall, the percentage of MBAs interested in a career in finance is continuing to drop, especially as the products/services and tech industries lure more and more grads. According to the most recent 2017 Alumni Perspectives Survey Report by the Graduate Management Admission Council, the percentage of alumni from two-year, full-time MBA programs working in the finance/accounting industry dropped to 11 percent this year, trailing the products/services (28 percent), tech (16 percent), and Read more

More than 10,000 MBA students, business school representatives, recruiters, and business executives filled the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia late last month for one of the largest career conferences serving minority professionals. The conference has been around since 1970, but for the first time this year the National Black MBA Association (NBMBAA) and Prospanica, the association of Hispanic professionals, joined forces to present it. The result was an incredible opportunity for attendees to network with companies and each other, take advantage of career development programming, and interview for and secure job offers from hundreds of companies spanning multiple industries. Cornell’s S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management had a group of approximately 55 students attend, a mix of first-year and second-year students, according to Cynthia Saunders-Cheatham, executive director of Johnson’s Career Management Center. “It was double what we have had in recent years, and perhaps the largest attendance we ever had for an MBA diversity conference,” she said. "Having a joint NBMBAA/Prospanica conference, in addition to the Philadelphia location that was driving distance away [from Ithaca, NY, where Johnson is located], helped to drive attendance." The connections that students made while there have already resulted in multiple job offers, she added. Read more

For years, social impact has been a growing area of emphasis at business schools. Increasingly, MBA students are stating that a well-paying career isn’t enough: They also want to make a difference. As Sherryl Kuhlman, the managing director of the Social Impact Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, told U.S. News & World Report: “Our students want to make the world go round in a different way. [They are no longer willing to] take a job they don't like so they can give their money away later. They want to merge the money and the purpose." MBA programs incorporate social impact into their programs in various ways, through global experiences, coursework, clubs, competitions, and more. MBA students may also have opportunities to team up with corporations, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations to get hands-on experience during their graduate studies. So if you’re interested in social impact, what opportunities should you look for within an MBA program? Read more

If you are a prospective MBA applicant looking to business school as a way to enter or accelerate your career in the consulting industry, you are certainly not alone. According to the 2017 Prospective Student Survey conducted by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), consulting is once again the most sought-after postgraduate industry, with 33 percent of applicants surveyed citing consulting firms as their destination of choice. The consulting function, too, is a top draw. One in four indicated it as their chosen job function, after just marketing/sales (30 percent) and finance/accounting (28 percent). With so many MBA graduates vying for roles in the consulting field, one of the best ways to distinguish yourself is by going to one of the business schools best known for training top-notch consultants. Of course, this requires thorough research and a deep knowledge of individual school programs. Lucky for you, Clear Admit has done some of the legwork.  Read more

It used to be that you got into business school, gave notice at your job, maybe spent some time backpacking through some faraway part of the world, and then showed up on campus ready to start your next chapter. Today, though, recruiters who are eager to meet with promising members of the Class of 2019 host dozens of pre-MBA boot camps and other networking events over the summer. And that can leave those who don’t take part at risk of feeling left behind on the first day of school. Summer Pre-MBA Events: What You Need to Know If you think boot camps are just for soldiers, and summer camps are just for kids, think again. Though most prevalent in the finance and consulting industries, events are on the rise that provide opportunities for companies to meet face to face with incoming first-year MBA students months before classes begin. Tech firms like Google and CPG firms like Nestlé and Proctor & Gamble are joining the likes of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, Bain and McKinsey, offering their own meet-and-greets in a bid to connect with top talent as early as possible. In addition to soirees put on by companies themselves, groups like the Forté Foundation, Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT), and Reaching Out MBA (ROMBA) also host events designed to offer early networking opportunities to women and underrepresented minorities. These events are part of the groups’ missions to increase opportunities for women and minorities in business school and beyond. Several individual companies—largely in consulting and finance, though not exclusively—also offer separate diversity events, hoping to forge early relationships with incoming first-year MBA students who are women, minorities, or members of other select groups. Of course, providing a forum that brings recruiters and students together also presents a money-making opportunity. Recognizing this, Poets & Quants last spring launched its own Pre-MBA Networking Festival, inviting MBA recruiters to sign on as sponsors and soon-to-be MBA students to pay $250 per person to attend. In a similar vein, executive search firm Jump Start Advisory Group runs a series of two-and-a-half-day diversity forums—one on brand management and marketing and another on financial services and consulting. Admitted MBA students who apply and are accepted to the Jump Start Diversity Forums get a comprehensive introduction to their chosen industries, while corporate recruiters get early access to diverse prospective students. Another offering, CPG Camp, is an online marketing boot camp that promises to help participants hone critical skill sets for the competitive consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry, with top CPG Campers guaranteed resume reviews or interviews with leading recruiters. All told, the events run the gamut from informal introductory open houses to industry-specific and multi-industry career fairs. In addition, many companies also offer deep-dive, multi-day camps designed to give participants a chance to experience first-hand just what their culture and industry is like while making valuable early connections. Though the vast majority of these opportunities are reserved for diversity candidates—women, underrepresented minorities, members of the LGBTQ community, veterans—some are open to all soon-to-be MBA students headed to leading business schools in the fall. This guide is designed to provide you with an overview of the landscape so you can narrow your focus to the events most suited to you. Our list begins with opportunities that are open to all prospective first-year MBA students interested in learning more about specific industries. Subsequent sections highlight opportunities for URMs, women, LGBTQ students and veterans respectively. Excluded from this list are numerous highly-selective fellowship opportunities—which in general offer a generous monetary award to be applied toward first-year tuition, a guaranteed summer internship with the employer, and a tentative full-time position. We will feature those in a separate upcoming article. Pre-MBA Events Open to All Prospective First-Year MBA Students Consulting Meet-and-Greets Consulting giants McKinsey & Company, Bain & Company, and Boston Consulting Group (BCG)—“the MBB firms,” as they are called—all host informal networking events designed to provide a consulting primer of sorts to prospective students, complete with an overview of the industry, an office tour, and opportunities to meet and talk to current employees and learn more about what their career paths are like. McKinsey puts on summer networking events all over the world. “We would like to celebrate your acceptance into an excellent program and share more about potential career opportunities we have to offer you,” reads its website. Its series of spring and summer events—spread across 33 locations—is “for anyone planning to pursue their full-time MBA in the Class of 2019,” according to the website. Interested students are invited to register, after which a recruiter from their selected office will be in touch with event details. “ExperienceBain GLOBAL,” meanwhile, is an opportunity for soon-to-be MBA students to connect with any of that firm’s 55 offices around the world. Registration is now open to enrolling MBA students starting at roughly 25 top business schools. (Students at these participating schools are encouraged to get involved, according to the Bain website.) In addition to tours and networking opportunities, ExperienceBain events in select cities can also include interactive workshops that give participants a chance to try their hand at a real Bain case, alongside a team of consultants and managers. A number of BCG's offices around the globe will be hosting what it calls “Newly Admitted MBA Receptions” for international students, providing an opportunity for prospective students from Canada, Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America to meet with representatives from the BCG office in their home country before heading off to school. Not to be left out, Deloitte will host three separate “Meet Deloitte Consulting” events in June, one in Chicago, a second in New York, and a third in San Francisco. Attendees will hear from office leaders and get to network with current employees. Finance Summer Seminars and MBA Camps Banks, too, offer opportunities for prospective first-year MBA students to learn more about the financial services industry. The Goldman Sachs MBA Camp is “a half-day program for prospective first-year MBA students from all business schools who are interested in learning more about the financial services industry and summer internship opportunities at the firm,” reads the Goldman website. In addition to an overview of the banking giant’s multiple business lines, the event also features case studies, career workshops, and networking opportunities with current employees. Bank of America, for its part, offers a seminar designed to introduce prospective first-year MBA students to BofA’s leading Global Corporate and Investment Banking (GCIB) group, which includes its corporate banking, capital markets, transaction services, leasing and investment banking teams. Participants get to hone technical skills while engaging with current employees across GCIB, and those who really shine may even be considered for a BofA summer internship. Read more

London Business School (LBS) MBA graduates are seeing higher salaries and increased hiring rates, but their love of the finance industry seems to be waning. According to the 2016 London Business School employment report, MBA grads are heading into the financial sector at the lowest rate in five years. Now, to be fair, one in every four LBS grads (25 percent) stills takes a job in finance, but that’s well behind the 35 percent of graduates who enter consulting. The technology industry hired the third-most LBS 2016 graduates at 21 percent—matching the the previous Read more

MBA students are back on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia Business School (CBS), shuttling to and from class, gathering to work on group projects and heavily involved in student clubs—much as they were in the first term. But close to 100 of those students have an expanded perspective of West Coast career opportunities thanks to their participation in career treks to a wide range of startups and established firms stretching from Los Angeles to Seattle. January marked the 20th anniversary of CBS’s Career Management Center (CMC) West Coast Treks, and in the two decades since they have Read more

If you’re growing weary of all the MBA data forms and essays and interviews and anxiety—keep your eyes on the prize! That light at the end of the tunnel? Well, a recent employer poll from the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) suggests it just keeps getting brighter. Each November, GMAC conducts a short year-end poll of employers, asking them to reflect on what business school graduate hiring actually looked like that year and what they anticipate hiring to look like in the year ahead. GMAC’s most recent Year-End Poll of Employers Report, released yesterday, paints a promising picture Read more

MIT Sloan School of Management late last week released its 2016 MBA Employment Report, revealing slightly slipping salaries year over year and slightly lower percentages of graduates heading into consulting and technology than in prior years. The pharmaceutical/healthcare industry drew the third largest percentage of graduates—5.8 percent—knocking investment banking out of the top three for the first time—perhaps ever. Investment banks drew just 4.7 percent of the 2016 class, down from 6.1 percent last year, 6.8 percent in 2014 and 8.1 in 2013.   Read more

Shortly after ascending to the top five in Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s latest annual ranking of best U.S. business schools, Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business released its 2016 employment statistics. Contributing to its strong showing in the Bloomberg BW ranking was the annual salary reported by Tuck grads. According to the latest employment stats released by the school, graduates of the Class of 2016 pulled down an average annual starting salary of $123,934. More than a third of Read more

Taking a little time off never hurt anyone. But while many people use the holidays as an opportunity to relax and recharge, it also has become a sneaky-good time to start looking for a new job. Elizabeth Wallencheck, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School director of alumni career management, and Kris Hergert (MBA ’09), associate director of the school’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, recently shared a handful reasons to seek work during the holidays: “Business doesn’t stop during the holidays—nor does the need to fill an open position.” Read more

Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) recently revealed data that cemented 2016 as a banner year for MBA graduates when it comes to both employment and salaries, demonstrating how in demand the talent and flexibility of its graduates are in the marketplace. The mean compensation for graduating MBAs from Stanford's most recent class was $179,345, a figure that includes the mean $23,636 starting bonus reported by 55 percent of the class and the record-breaking mean other guaranteed compensation of $74,665 reported by 35 percent of the class. Median total compensation, meanwhile, was $163,827. This figure puts Stanford GSB grads ahead of Class of 2016 Harvard Business School graduates, whose median total compensation was $158,080, as well as every other leading business school that has reported its 2016 employment figures. Read more

‘Tis the season for MBA employment reports, and one of the latest schools to share details about how its most recent class of graduates fared in their quest for jobs is Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. Released in its entirety last week, the report shows a surge of graduates heading off toward technology firms—22 percent of the class, up from 15 percent last year. “I do think the tech story jumps out,” says Liza Kirkpatrick, director of career management for the full-time MBA program. “But we really are very proud of this year’s employment outcomes overall.” She went on to cite the fact that 96 percent of students received an offer within three months of graduation, up slightly from 95 percent the year before. The median base salary was $125,000, up $2,000 from the year before. Read more

For MBA students looking to head into investment management, pitching stocks is one of the top skills they'll be looking to strengthen while in business school. The 12th Annual Alpha Challenge, hosted last month at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, gives participating students hands-on opportunity to do precisely that. MBA students at the University of Texas’s McCombs School of Business took home first place at this year's event—which took place November 17th and 18th—but students from more than a dozen participating schools honed their skills, made valuable connections and, in many cases, even interviewed with potential recruiting firms. Read more

The University of Michigan's Ross School of Business earlier this month released its 2016 MBA Employment Report, and the results are nothing short of stellar. A staggering 98.4 percent of MBA grads earned a job three months after graduating, according to the report, representing a slight uptick from the previous year’s 97.4 percent. For comparison, Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) reports that 90 percent of its 2016 grads had a job 90 days out from graduation, down from 92 percent the year before. Ross grads with jobs waiting for them the day they graduated also inched upward this year over last, from 92.4 percent to 93.5 percent. Read more