Wharton MBA Salaries Jump As Finance Recovers - Poets&Quants

The Wharton School is placing a big bet on business analytics

A year after the percentage of Wharton MBAs pursuing careers in finance dropped to  record low of 32.7% in 2017, financial services made something of a recovery at Wharton this year, luring away more MBA graduates from consulting and technology. The uptick to 36.9%–more than four percentage points–helped to boost starting MBA median salaries to a record $135,000, up $5,000 from last year and up $10,000 from two years go.

Wharton’s new 2018 employment report, however, fails to detail such commonly disclosed stats as median signing bonus or the percentage of graduates who received that bonus or, for that matter, the job offer and job placement rates of international graduates. Last year, the median sign-on bonus at Wharton was $25,000, received by 77.2% of the class. If those numbers held steady, the median starting pay package for this year’s graduating MBAs came to $154,300. That median total companies to average salary and signing bonus of $160,717 at UVA’s Darden School of Business (see Internationals Having More Trouble Landing U.S. Jobs). Wharton declined to report average compensation numbers this year nor the school’s major employers.

Wharton reported that 98.4% of its graduating class had job offers three months after graduation, up from 97.1% las year. The school said that 94.6% of MBAs accepted those offers, up from 92.6% a year earlier. Some 95.1% of the 813 graduates seeking jobs reported their jobs data to Wharton for the 2018 employment report.

FINANCE BEGINS A COMEBACK AT WHARTON THANKS LARGELY TO PE AND BUYOUT FIRMS

The big news, however, was the reversal of years of decline for the financial sector at Wharton, long known as the finance school. Most of the increase could be attributed to a big boost in the number of MBAs who entered private equity and buyout firms, a more than three percentage point rise to 11.4% of the class, up from 8.2%. More Wharton MBAs also signed on with investment management firms, 6.7% this year versus 5.3% in 2017.

Financial services gained at the expense of both consulting and tech jobs. MBAs headed into consulting at Wharton totaled 25% of the class, down from 28.3% a year earlier, while those who took jobs in the tech industry came to 14.9% of the class, a decrease from 16.0%.

The highest median salaries went to JD-MBAs in “professional services” who reported median base salaries of $180,000. The small 1.7% of the class who landed jobs in venture capital reported median salaries of $175,000, up from $125,000 last year. Students who accepted jobs with hedge funds had median salaries of $162,00, up from $150,000 in 2017. MBAs who joined the consulting industry and PE and buyout field reported  median salaries of $150,000.

SOME 88.3% OF WHARTON MBAS LANDED JOBS IN THE U.S.

A Wharton spokesperson said the school will provided some updated information in mid-November on its website, adding that 11.5% of the class reported median guaranteed bonus of $30,000.

Some 88.3% of the students who accepted their offers gained jobs in the U.S., with the remaining 11.7% going overseas for their jobs (see below).

Wharton 2018 employment report

DON’T MISS: MEET WHARTON’S MBA CLASS OF 2020

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