Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Finance Careers Fall To New Low At Wharton - Poets&Quants

Wharton Commitment Project

Wharton MBA graduates at 2017 commencement

The numbers of Wharton MBAs going into the financial services industry reached a new record low this year, falling to 32.7% of the graduating class. Only five years ago, the financial sector hired 41.0% of Wharton’s MBAs. The single biggest fall occurred in investment banking and brokerage jobs which took just 12.7% of the class, down from 16.1% a year earlier.

The decline, however, was more than made up by the consulting and technology industries which grabbed more of Wharton’s output. Some 28.3% of this year’s crop of Wharton MBAs went into consulting, up from 26.6% a year earlier and just a single percentage point below the 2013 high point. A record 16% of the class landed jobs in the tech sector, up from 12.6% last year.

Despite the continued decline of finance at Wharton, a school that built its reputation on Wall Street and the broader financial services industry, MBAs overall saw a 4.0% rise in median compensation to $149,300, from $143,625 last year. After four years during which Wharton’s median base salary was stuck at $125,000, this year the base jumped to $130,000, and slightly more graduates, 77.2% verus 74.5% last year, reported median sign-on bonuses of $25,000.

97.1% OF WHARTON’S GRADS HAD JOB OFFERS THREE MONTHS AFTER GRADUATION

Wharton also reported that some of its graduates received other guaranteed compensation of $20,500, but failed to disclose the percentage of the graduating class that reported the year-end bonuses in their starting packages, according to the school’s recently published 2017 employment report. The report is based on a 94.9% response rate, up from 92.5% a year earlier.

All around, it was one of the best years for both pay and employment in Wharton’s history. The school said that 97.1% of its graduates had job offers three months after graduation and that 92.6% had accepted their offers. That’s just a slight decline from last year’s numbers when 98.3% had job offers in that timeframe when 95.5% of the graduates had accepted their offers.

Finance, despite its continued decline as a favored destination by MBAs, was still the number one industry of choise at Wharton, attracting more graduates over consulting by four and one-half percentage points. The highest median base salaries of $150,000, moreover, were in two financial categories: hedge funds and other investments as well as private equity and buyouts. Just 3.7% of the class landed jobs iwth hedge funds, while 8.3% gained jobs at PE and buyout firms.

CONSULTING MEDIAN BASE SALARY AT WHARTON THIS YEAR: $147,500

The consulting industry, on the other hand, has raised the ante in this recruiting season. Wharton reported that the median base salary for MBAs entering the industry hit $147,500 this year, higher than the overall financial services industry starting pay stub. Last year, the median base in consulting was $145,000 at Wharton.

After finance, consulting and tech, consumer products was the fourth most popular career choice of Wharton MBAs this year, with 6.3% of the class accepting jobs in that industry. It was followed by healthcare which hired 5.8% of the class and 3.0% who went into real estate (see table on following page for industry choices of Whartonites over the years).

Wharton also disclosed that graduates who took jobs outside the U.S. made considerably less than money than the MBAs who landed positions in the U.S. The median base salary for international locations was $115,000, with the lowest salaries–$90,000–reported in Latin America and the highest salaries–$138,000–in Hong Kong. But the overall median was $20K less than the U.S. median of $135,000.

The school did not reveal its highest paid MBA this year, breaking from a long-standing tradition of providing the full range of compensation for MBAs in specific industry categories. Instead, the school followed the lead of Harvard Business School in reporting the 25th and 75th percentile medians. On base pay, the 25th percentile amounted to $122,000, while the 75th percentile was $150,000. For sign-on bonuses, the 25th percentile was $25,000, exactly the same as the actual median for the class, while the 75th percentile was $40,000.

Of the 819 graduates in Wharton’s Class of 2017, 8.1% returned to their pre-MBA employers, 4.8% started their own companies or were already self-employed, while 2.8% postponed their job searches or continued their education.

Wharton School of Business

DON’T MISS: WHAT HARVARD MBAS MADE THIS YEAR or MORE KELLOGG MBAS HEAD FOR THE WEST COAST THAN THE MIDWEST

The post Finance Careers Fall To New Low At Wharton appeared first on Poets&Quants.



from Poets&Quants
via IFTTT

No comments: