The website PayScale has surveyed alumni from over 200 US business schools to rank the schools based on post-MBA salaries.
For those early in their career (less than five years out from graduation), it turns alumni from the MBA at MIT's Sloan School of Management lead the list, with an average salary of $131,000. UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and Yale University's School of Management come in second, with grads from each school making around $123,000 less than five years after their MBA.
In terms of "mid-career pay"—those at least ten years out from graduation—grads from Harvard Business School lead, with a median salary of $190,000. Next up are MBAs from the Wharton School ($182,000), and Stanford University Graduate School of Business ($175,000).
Interestingly, the salaries for grads from some MBA programs further down the ranking show steeper growth between early- and mid-career professionals. For instance, the number more than doubled for grads from Pace University's Lubin School of Business School: the median salary for early-career alumni was $61,500, while the mid-career median was $145,000. Other schools where the salary differential was more than doubled include West Virginia University's College of Business and Economics ($53,400 to $123,000), and Chapman University's Argyros School of Business and Economics ($60,500 to $137,000).
The MBA programs that showed the lowest mid-career salaries included Kaplan University (with a median mid-career salary of $63,900), Upper Iowa University ($66,000), Colorado Technical University's online MBA ($70,400), and Strayer University ($73,800).
Here's are the top-10 business schools, based on mid-career salary medians:
| Rank | Business School | Early-Career Median Pay | Mid-Career Median Pay |
| 1. |
Harvard Business School
|
$114,000 | $190,000 |
| 2. | The Wharton School | $122,000 | $182,000 |
| 3. | Stanford University Graduate School of Business | $118,000 | $175,000 |
| 4. | MIT - Sloan School of Management | $131,000 | $171,000 |
| 5. | UC Berkeley - Haas School of Business | $123,000 | $169,000 |
| 6. | Columbia Business School | $104,000 | $167,000 |
| 7. | Northwestern University - Kellogg Business School | $117,000 | $164,000 |
| 8. | UCLA - Anderson School of Management | $103,000 | $160,000 |
| 9. | University of Chicago - Booth School of Business | $122,000 | $159,000 |
| 10. | Duke University - Fuqua School of Business | $102,000 |
$158,000
|
The data for this survey was collected based on an online, ongoing compensation survey. Somewhere between 50 and 4000 user profiles were surveyed for each school, depending largely on the size of the school. For more, please see PayScale's 2015-2016 College Salary Report.
Photo: 401(K) 2012 / Creative Commons
