Getting into the $200k club: Here's one of the surest paths

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July 16, 2021

Is an MBA still worth it?

This week, we launched Fortune's first-ever Best MBA Programs ranking. Our goal was to find out how much employers value MBAs, while building a ranking that gets back to the basics—looking for programs that not only send their graduates off into good jobs right out of the gate but also have a track record of producing alumni who reach the highest echelons of corporate America. 

Along the way, I collected a ton of data. Including our business school brand study done with Ipsos. To conduct the study, Ipsos polled 2,500 U.S. business professionals.*

For this week's issue of Fortune Analytics, we look at some of that MBA data. Here's what we found.

The numbers to know 

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The big picture

A few deeper takeaways

Among business professionals, 66% say choosing the right business school can open up doors to a successful career. But it isn't all because of the curriculum: Among that same group of business professionals surveyed by Fortune and Ipsos, 52% say the value of an MBA is more in who you meet than what you learn in B-School. Additionally, 67% say that on-the-job experience is more relevant than what you learn at business school. 

But obviously business schools are doing something right: Our research finds that Harvard Business School alone has more than 100 MBA grads in the Fortune 1000 C-suites. 

Last week, Ann Harrison, dean of No. 13 ranked UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, explained it to me this way: "Generally speaking, corporate America is very much run by individuals who have these really valuable degrees [MBAs] that combine both quantitative skills, [like] the ability to sift through massive amounts of data, and leadership skills." 

The Wall Street Journal published a piece last week highlighting the woes of graduate degree recipients across America. The article zoned in on Columbia University's film program—where half of their alum don't earn more than $30,000 two years after leaving. That's a starkly different picture than No. 6-ranked Columbia Business School, whose median new MBA grad is earning $150,000 base salary.

Among the top 20 schools in our full-time MBA ranking, the lowest median starting salary was $125,000. That's nearly double the nation's median household income ($68,703)—and it doesn't even include signing bonuses, equity, or performance-based pay. Among UC Berkeley's 2020 class, 43% received stock options.  

Our salary figures are for 2020 classes—who graduated amid the worst months of the COVID-19 recession and a double-digit jobless rate. School deans tell me that their 2021 grads are getting much larger compensation packages. (We won't get that data until later this year).

In 2010, new MBA graduates at Stanford Graduate School of Business (No. 2 on our list) earned a median base salary of $120,000 right after graduation. Fast forward to 2020, and that number is up 30% to $156,000. Stanford isn't alone: Other top programs saw similar gains, including a rise of 47% at No. 4-ranked Booth School of Business during that same ten-year span. 

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