The OP is admitted to McCombs, which is the business school of the University of Texas: that's why I am using Texas as an example.

You seem to reason that because that US lifestyle is more costly to replicate outside the US, the other person should attend UTA rather than IESE.

I am not sure I understand.  Did you even read my original reply to OP?  I said he should go with IESE and I even listed the reasons why. 

My original comment was not to use the PPP numbers at FT when looking at salaries.  It had nothing to do with University of Texas vs IESE. 

That's why I find it incredibly strange you kept on comparing Singapore with Texas.  Makes absolutely no sense to me.

Regarding the distortions caused by PPP, it was not only the Economist that agrees with me, but even you posted in the past that it was causing distortions in the FT rankings.  So I find it amazing you are suddenly supporting PPP.

Because of these reasons, I am not sure you are Duncan himself.  Are you possibly a ghost writer who is doing this on Duncan's behalf while he is away on vacation?

[Edited by DACHMBA on Jan 25, 2022]

Hahaha; no, it's certainly me. I'm glad I reflected back to you what I thought I had heard, and I am glad we agree on IESE as a viable option for this person. 

I am discussing Texas because UTA is in Texas, and because you introduced Singapore  I am responding to you about that. I've introduced neither of those places into the discussion. 

Both things can be true at the same time: PPP and other price indexes have unavoidable problems; but the FT is well advised to use them rather than developing an alternative index, since that would be unprofitable and unnecessary for the purpose of selling advertising to the schools. 

Hahaha; no, it's certainly me. I'm glad I reflected back to you what I thought I had heard, and I am glad we agree on IESE as a viable option for this person. 

I am discussing Texas because UTA is in Texas, and because you introduced Singapore  I am responding to you about that. I've introduced neither of those places into the discussion. 

Both things can be true at the same time: PPP and other price indexes have unavoidable problems; but the FT is well advised to use them rather than developing an alternative index, since that would be unprofitable and unnecessary for the purpose of selling advertising to the schools. 

[Edited by MKennedy on Jan 25, 2022]

Hahaha; no, it's certainly me. I'm glad I reflected back to you what I thought I had heard, and I am glad we agree on IESE as a viable option for this person. 

I am discussing Texas because UTA is in Texas, and because you introduced Singapore  I am responding to you about that. I've introduced neither of those places into the discussion. 

Both things can be true at the same time: PPP and other price indexes have unavoidable problems; but the FT is well advised to use them rather than developing an alternative index, since that would be unprofitable and unnecessary for the purpose of selling advertising to the schools. 

I think we are in agreement here LOL. 

In my mind, this is the correct and factual statement to compare salaries for IESE vs Texas:

"IESE has lower salaries than University of Texas, but the lower cost of living in Spain more than offsets the salary advantage of UT."

This is misleading:

"IESE has higher salaries than UT"

It is similar to saying "Edinburgh salaries might be lower than London salaries, but the cost of living savings more than offsets the higher London salaries."  The wrong way to say this is: "Edinburgh salaries are higher than London salaries."

I'm not sure you will agree, but that was the whole point I wanted to make.  By using the FT PPP salaries, the statement becomes misleading.  I am sure you will agree with that (or not, which in such case we can agree to disagree LOL). 

Again, I recommended IESE for the OP.  Not sure why people here and on other boards are so defensive when it comes to IESE. 

[Edited by DACHMBA on Jan 25, 2022]

Now that I am getting interested in this discussion I digged a bit deeper in the current IESE employment report:

Average Salary (IESE) for North America:

116,6k EUR fix / 38,7k EUR var


Average Salary (IESE) for Europe excluding Spain:

93k EUR fix /  44,5k EUR var


For McCombs the Median Salary (although 2020) was 125k USD meaning that, if we assume that most of the McCombs MBAs end up working in the US, that the US salary of IESE is based on current exchange rates higher (130k vs 125k) than McCombs! 


Thus - if we allow for some assumptions - you could very well argue that even in the North America IESE yields the same salary than McCombs or even higher (which was frankly quite surprising to me)! 




Edit: I don´t perceive it as being offensive or defensive - just an interesting discussion about two good schools that is much more fruitful than the 100th question about whether "University of you have never heard about" will place a non-native speaker to Private Equity.

Now that I am getting interested in this discussion I digged a bit deeper in the current IESE employment report:

Average Salary (IESE) for North America:




116,6k EUR fix / 38,7k EUR var





Average Salary (IESE) for Europe excluding Spain:




93k EUR fix /  44,5k EUR var





For McCombs the Median Salary (although 2020) was 125k USD meaning that, if we assume that most of the McCombs MBAs end up working in the US, that the US salary of IESE is based on current exchange rates higher (130k vs 125k) than McCombs! 





Thus - if we allow for some assumptions - you could very well argue that even in the North America IESE yields the same salary than McCombs or even higher (which was frankly quite surprising to me)! 







Edit: I don´t perceive it as being offensive or defensive - just an interesting discussion about two good schools that is much more fruitful than the 100th question about whether "University of you have never heard about" will place a non-native speaker to Private Equity.

Agree that comparing IESE and UT McCombs placement in the same location would be a more apples to apples comparison.  But if you were strongly arguing in favor of cost of living difference adjustment, then you would have to consider where in the US the IESE grads ended up.  The majority of McCombs students will be located in Texas or the south, which is a lot cheaper than other regions.  If IESE grads primarily end up in New York, then we can't really do an apples to apples comparison.   It sounds much complicated than it is. 

That's why the best approach is just using actual (not PPP) salaries.  That way, the student has the flexibility his/her own research to figure out the appropriate cost of living adjustment.   With FT, they don't even provide actual salaries, hiding that from sight, making the salary data useless for students to do their own calculations.  Better to use the MBA reports for salary info as the FT salary data, in my mind, is useless. 

As a question to both Duncan and DACHMBA, which statement do you agree with:

1) IESE has lower salaries than Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, IIM Calcutta and CEIBS.

2) IESE has higher salaries than IIM-B, IIM-C and CEIBS.  But the distortions caused by PPP are inflating the IIM-B, IIM-C and CEIBS salaries. 

Just to let you know, FT data says (1) because it uses PPP data.   I support the view in (2).  

[Edited by DACHMBA on Jan 26, 2022]