Think the East Coast is the exclusive domain of Harvard and Wharton? Someone forgot to tell Stanford, whose 39 grads snapped up an average base of $155,667. That’s $9,000 more than HBS grads received (and $13,000 better than Wharton base pay). Was Stanford’s dominance a blip on the radar? Not quite, as Stanford topped all rivals in 2015 too, with its 2016 bases jumping by nearly $12,500 in the past year alone (no doubt buoyed by Stanford’s $159,119 average in finance). Yes, you could argue that Stanford is literally painting Wall Street red. While the Ivy League may have lost its proverbial hometown advantage, they certainly aren’t offering a hometown discount in response. Harvard and Wharton still rank second and third in average base pay…and Dartmouth Tuck vaulted MIT Sloan and Chicago Booth to reachfourth. Looking for a surprise? How about those 24 Emory Goizueta grads who averaged $128,000 to start, besting Virginia Darden, NYU Stern, and Duke Fuqua along the way. Of course, it didn’t hurt that one Emory grad snagged a $300,000 starting base, second only to one Harvard grad’s $500,000 payday. Overall, most graduates who moved to the Northeast saw their pay increase by roughly $2,000, though MIT Sloan Duke Fuqua, and Texas McCombs grads experienced a slight downturn in their fortunes. As always, Columbia declined to supply salary data in any region.