Scott Edinburgh
April 21, 2016

Curious About Salary Differences Across Industries? TransparentMBA Has You Covered

A new and innovative salary website was recently founded by Chicago Booth students. Think of this as the Glass Door for MBAs, but a whole lot more useful (and relevant). See below for an interesting post from their site:

“At TransparentMBA, we provide deep, rich, customizable data on MBA salary and satisfaction for the jobs MBAs care about most. Our 24,000 data points have unlocked some rich insights about top MBA compensation and satisfaction by industry. But we saw the need for one, simple metric to answer the question of post-MBA salary vs. work-life balance.

Enter our new Work/Life Insights Dashboard (coming soon!). By taking average hours/week and comparing this with MBA compensation data, we cast MBA jobs in a new light: by effective hourly wage. Let’s see what insights this first-of-its-kind report has to show…

Investment Management still rules the roost: With lower hours worked relative to banking and massive compensation packages, MBA jobs in Investment Management topped out the list a stunning $120/hour.

Tech continues to impress: Already heating up as a viable industry for exiting MBAs, Tech placed in at #3 (e-commerce) and #5 (software) on our first ranking with an average of about $100/hour effective salary.

Consulting and I-banking fall to the middle despite generous overall compensation, Investment Banking (#11, $66/hour) and Consulting (#9, $70/hour) jobs fell due to high overall hours worked. However, these jobs will no doubt continue to be in high demand based on ancillary benefits like excellent training and sheer volume of jobs.

With this powerful data, we can start to explore the biggest question facing all current and prospective students: is an MBA worth it?

Well, our average post-MBA offer clocks in at about $75/hour, representing an average total compensation of over $200,000/year for MBA graduates and 59 hours worked per week. That’s a hefty sum, but so is tuition: this Poets & Quants article claims that 4 top-tier MBA programs now estimate total costs at over $200K, with the median net of scholarships around $171,000. Ouch.

Using this as a benchmark and the Federal Unsubsidized Stafford rate of 6.84%, an MBA graduate would have to work 62 weeks to pay back the loan plus interest. And that’s not even considering the opportunity cost of not working during a full-time MBA, something touched on nicely in this article by Investopedia.

Of course, on average, MBAs will only hold their post-degree job for 3.8 years and will presumably be increasingly their salary on a yearly basis, so maybe it’s a wash. But it sure does make those sponsored consultants look good…”

https://www.transparentmba.com/blog

Not ready to look at salaries but want to know how to get into a top MBA program? Send me an email and we can chat.

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