Last year, Stanford GSB endured the most personal of insults: Their 2016 graduates weren’t the highest-paid MBAs in their region. To make matters, West Coast employers paid more to Harvard Business School grads. Ouch! Turns out, this switch was an anomaly, not a trend. Last year, Stanford MBAs secured starting bases of $144,170, an $11,300 improvement over the past two years. It was also a better outing than HBS’ $140,183 performance. The Wharton School also made strides out west with its 2017 Class pulling down $134,094 to start – an $8,000 improvement that may stem, in some part, to the school’s San Francisco campus supplying area employers with interns and partners. By the same token, West Coast employers, in many ways, take their own programs for granted. Berkeley Haas grads, for one, earned $125,693 in base pay – good for 12th overall. UCLA Anderson grads made $122,114 – 18th overall – with USC Marshall MBA earning less in the West than in the Northeast or Midwest. Not surprisingly, a Stanford grad landed the highest base among West Coast employers, with seven programs boasting one or more students who landed starting pay over $200K (including #31 Notre Dame). The biggest pay improvement belonged to Washington Olin, where base rose over $31K. The University of Washington’s Foster School also engineered a $16K improvement in the Class of 2017.