20 MBA Programs That Often Send Grads Into Lucrative Fields

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.

Compensation statistics submitted for the U.S. News 2020 B est Business School rankings, which included 131 ranked MBA programs, reveal that there are two types of post-MBA jobs which tend to be especially lucrative: consulting and general management positions. The average base salary for MBA grads in 2018 who became consultants was $101,108, and the average base salary among grads who acquired general management jobs was $92,802.

(Though it is common for MBA grads to receive both a salary and a bonus, such as a signing bonus, these figures only reflect the salary amount.)

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 Return on Investment.]

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 MBA 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."

These are the 10 B-schools that sent the sent the greatest share of their 2018 MBA grads into consulting jobs.

-- Yale University: 48%

-- Emory University (Goizueta): 44%

-- University of Southern California (Marshall): 40%

-- George Washington University: 39%

-- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan): 39%

-- New York University (Stern): 38%

-- Dartmouth College (Tuck): 37%

-- Northwestern University (Kellogg): 37%

-- Louisiana State University--Baton Rouge (Ourso): 37%

-- Columbia University: 36%

In contrast, here are the 10 schools that sent the largest percentage of 2018 MBA grads into general management jobs.

-- Oklahoma State University (Spears): 44%

-- College of William and Mary (Mason): 30%

-- University of Mississippi: 29%

-- University of Utah (Eccles): 28%

-- Babson College (Olin): 25%

-- Cornell University (Johnson): 24%

-- Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper): 23%

-- Washington University in St. Louis (Olin): 23%

-- Duke University (Fuqua): 21%

-- University of California-Berkeley (Haas): 21%

Among these 20 MBA programs, the program that sent the highest proportion of its MBA grads into consulting jobs was the Yale School of Management. Meanwhile, the B-school where MBA grads were most likely to land general management jobs was Oklahoma State University's Spears School of Business.

Stephen Rakas, executive director of the Masters Careers Center at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business in Pittsburgh, suggests that the percentage of a given MBA class entering a particular industry is a solid starting point for research. "It's also worthwhile to determine if there's a variety of employers recruiting in your target industries and whether there's a match in outcomes with your geographic preferences," he 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 base 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 four of those 10 schools, the average general manager salary among 2018 grads was below the average among all B-schools.

However, there are some B-schools which had both a high percentage of MBA grads hired as consultants and unusually high salaries among those grads, such as the Yale School of Management. Nearly half -- 48%? -- of Yale's MBA grads became consultants, and the average salary among these grads was $130,325, which is more than $29,000 higher than the typical salary among 2018 MBA recipients whose occupation involved consulting. Similarly, the University of California?--Berkeley's Haas School of Business placed 21% of its grads into general management positions, and the average salary in these positions was $129,143, which is over $35,000 higher than the norm among MBA grads in this occupation.

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 MBA Programs 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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