MBA Programs With The Best ROI - Poets&Quants

No other school offers a better bang for your buck than the University of Wisconsin School of Business, according to data published today (February 5) by SoFi. For the second year in a row, the student loan refinancing company, founded by a team of Stanford Graduate School of Business MBAs, tracked three years’ worth of data from applications submitted by MBA graduates, including average salary and debt. SoFi then conducted a basic salary-to-debt ratio to score and rank business schools based on that ratio, calling it the “No BS” Return on Education 2018 MBA. Last year the University of Wisconsin finished fourth, where graduates reported an average salary of $109,954 and average debt of $59,864, for an ROI score of 1.8x. This year, Wisconsin surged to the top with an average salary of $122,532 and average debt of $52,568 for an ROI score of 2.3x.

Last year’s winner, Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Business, also notched an ROI score of 2.3x, but was placed second based on the average starting salary of $114,599 and an average debt of $50,224. The discrepancy, of course, is due to SoFi rounding the average salary divided by average debt. When not rounding to the first digit after the decimal, Wisconsin scores a 2.33x and BYU lands at 2.28x.

While the first two spots went to a public school and a private school with notorious low tuition costs and solid scholarships, two MBA heavyweights took the next two spots. Harvard Business School and Stanford GSB both had ROI scores at 2.2x; however, when rounded further, HBS got the nod with 2.21x to Stanford’s 2.18x. Average salaries and debt at both schools were close. Graduates from HBS reported an average salary of $184,463 to Stanford’s $186,534. Reported debt at HBS was $83,337 compared to $85,433 at Stanford.

Villanova’s School of Business rounded out the top five, finishing just off Stanford with an ROI score of 2.17x, although SoFi listed it as 2.1x in the published data.

The averaged data is based on more than 60,000 SoFi loan applications from MBA graduates between January 2014 and December 2017. To be clear, the data does not necessarily reflect graduates between that time, but graduates that chose to submit a SoFi loan application during that time frame, which is why average salaries are generally higher than career reports published by schools.

The data also sheds some interesting light on average salary and debt being reported by MBA graduates. For example, graduates of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School MBA program self-reported an average salary of $224,034 — higher than any other school that had specific data published by SoFi. Whartonites, however, also reported more debt than any other peer school with an average of $128,549. Although, graduates of Virginia’s Darden School of Business reported $138,667.

Graduates of Columbia Business School reported the second-highest average salary at $189,295. As reported earlier, graduates at the GSB and HBS reported the next highest average salaries at $186,534 and $184,463, respectively. The University of California-Berkeley Haas School of Business rounded out the top five where graduates reported earning an average salary of $171,270. UC-Berkeley was the only public school in the top ten of average salaries. The University of Virginia’s Darden School had the second largest average salary among the publics with $154,902.

After Darden and Wharton, graduates of Columbia Business School reported the third highest debt average at $123,277. Next highest came from graduates of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, which reported average debt totals of $109,451 and $109,073, respectively.

Davenport University’s Maine College of Business had the lowest ROI with a score of .5x. Davenport University photo

On the other end of the ROI spectrum is Davenport University’s Maine College of Business, headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The private university, which features multiple versions of an MBA including an accelerated year-long program and a “Competency Based” MBA, had an average reported salary of $82,344, but an average debt of $151,070 — much higher than all other programs with SoFi data published. The result was an ROI score of .5x. Up next was Strayer University, which offers an online MBA, which scored .8x. Graduates of the Strayer online program reported an average salary of $76,870 and average debt of $98,490. Next was Colorado Technical University’s online MBA program. The for-profit university based in Colorado Springs had graduates report earning $75,923 and compiling a debt load of $83,050.

SoFi’s list is of course not the only one on the market with similar data. Late last summer U.S. News & World Report also published a similar report with 2016 salary and debt data among MBA programs. Using the exact same calculation as SoFi, the U.S. News gave the best ROI nod to MBA graduates of the University of Texas-Austin’s McCombs School of Business with a score of 1.9x. Graduates of the full-time MBA program at McCombs reported an average salary of $113,481 and average debt total of $59,860. Stanford GSB had the second-highest ROI score at 1.8x, where 2016 graduates reported earning $140,553 and accumulated a debt average of $80,091. Harvard Business School and Emory University’s Goizueta School of Business each notched a 1.6x ROI score and UCLA’s Anderson School of Management rounded out the U.S. News top five with an ROI score of 1.5x.

Another potential caveat to the SoFi rankings is the wide fluctuations in salaries compared to last year’s rankings. For example, Wharton’s $224,034 is a massive jump from the $171,671 in last year’s report. Graduates of HBS reported making the next highest year-over-year gains, jumping an average of more than $34K from $149,925 last year to $184,463 this year. Stanford GSB, Berkeley’s Haas, Northwestern’s Kellogg, and Cornell’s Johnson had all their graduates report at least $20,000 in higher average salaries from 2017 to 2018.

While the average salaries seem to generally reflect mid-career averages, Wharton’s average this year seems to be inflated. According to Payscale data that P&Q published nearly two years ago, HBS grads made $201,000 on average at mid-career — more than any other school. Next was Columbia Business School with $184,000 at mid-career, followed by graduates of MIT Sloan that reported an average of $183,000. Wharton was next at $181,000.

Last year’s rankings included loan applications between January 2014 to September 2016, where as this year went from January 2014 but stretched all the way to last December (2017).

DON’T MISS: THE MOST LUCRATIVE SEVEN-FIGURE MBA DEGREES or THE BEST-PAID MBA ALUMNI

The post MBA Programs With The Best ROI appeared first on Poets&Quants.

from Poets&Quants
via IFTTT