The (recent) graduates making $400k

Harvard Business School is (probably) the most famous business school in the world.

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Aside from the books that mention it, “what they teach you at Harvard Business School” and “what they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School” (set theory suggests that these two books contain the entire sum of knowledge the universe has to offer), they’re also popular destinations for the hallowed halls of high finance to hire from.

The school recently published employment data for its class of 2024. It broke down the numbers by the number of students that entered each industry, as well as their median salaries and bonuses.

Finance salaries and bonuses at Harvard Business School’s MBA program

The numbers are quite different to last year’s, although not across the board. Median base salaries are the same as last year at $175k, with small increases and decreases across various industries - Consulting and Private Equity salaries were down $2k and $5k respectively, while both hedge funds and venture capital paid $2.5k more a head in salaries, on average.

Signing bonuses also stayed relatively flat, with investment banking venture capital funds paying slightly less than last year, and private equity paying slightly more.

As last year, it was in performance bonuses that there was a real difference between industries. The market-leading salaries of consultants translated to just $40k in performance bonuses, whilst investment bankers, for instance, saw $175k base salaries be accompanied with $175k performance bonuses on average.

Despite that, bonuses were generally down. Private equity bonuses fell from a median of $181k to just $155k. Hedge fund bonuses fell even more dramatically, from a median of $120k to $90k. Venture capital median bonuses fell from $50k to $42k.

The comparatively small bonuses of consultants were in fact the only median we analyzed that actually increased year-on-year.

It’s not very surprising to see decreases across the board. Although things started getting better later in the year, it was a poor start to the year for financial services, and it's likely that this upcoming bonus season will fare better than last - if you trust financial services employees, at least.

Stanford and Wharton business school MBA salaries & bonuses

Wharton and Stanford’s business schools are also very prestigious, although the employment data they offer on graduates isn’t as conclusive as Harvard’s.

Where there is data, it's pretty consistent. The best-paid Stanford graduates are, by a whisker, hedge fund employees; at Wharton, they had the best median salaries alongside venture capitalists.

Curiously, across the board, investment banking seems to have fallen out of favor with MBA students. Whilst they made up a fair few of Wharton’s graduate class (15%), they were much rarer among Harvard’s (5%) and almost non-existent for Stanford’s (2%), who seemed to prefer even Venture Capital at higher rates.

Consulting, however, seems a relatively unassailably popular choice. Its salaries are also very consistent, with a median of around $190k. Total compensation packages, which include signing and performance bonuses, are also consistent where the information is available (Harvard and Stanford).

What does this all mean for the wallet-measuring contests, though? It's hard to say exactly. Your best bet is probably private equity, which was the second-best paid career choice at both Stanford and Harvard, in spite of the industry's recent woes. Failing that, hedge funds pay a pretty penny - or consider joining the small handful of your peers that go into investment banking.

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