Top-to-bottom, you’ll find the highest starting pay in Consulting. 32 MBA programs reported base pay averages of $120K or better, with Stanford GSB edging out Harvard Business School for bragging rights ($142,151 vs. $141,585). Dartmouth Tuck, Columbia Business School, and the Wharton School also cracked the $140K mark, with just $400 separating the three. For the most part, pay followed school rank, with notable exceptions. Graduates from SMU Cox and Minnesota Carlson, for one, averaged $128,500 and $128,361. Translation: These schools were a shade below Yale SOM and U.C.-Berkeley Haas in base compensation. Consulting also shines when it comes to high-end pay. At 36 schools, you’ll find bases reaching as high as $150,000 (and $170K or more at 18 schools). The downside, of course, is that consulting pay has produced slow growth over the past three years, with just two of the twenty highest-ranked program experiencing an average pay jump of $10K or more.