2023 MBA Pay: Finance

The Wharton School…Chicago Booth…Columbia Business School. Those are the three schools that come to mind when MBAs picture the top Finance programs. Reality is, when it comes to starting MBA pay, the Wharton School is the only MBA program that lives up to this stature. To start, Stanford GSB (again) ranks as the top business school for average. Their 66 Finance grads landed $205,182 bases in 2023, which is nearly $5,000 less than the previous GSB Finance cohort. You can’t say the same about the Wharton School, whose $184,596 average actually represents a surge of nearly $10,000 over the previous year. While Harvard Business School ranked 3rd in average starting pay at $183,381, this number reflects a nearly $8,500 per graduate drop in base compensation from the Class of 2022. At the same time, Kellogg Finance hires improved their pay by over $18,000 in the past year. Individually, an MIT Sloan grad negotiated a $550,000 base, more than triple their classmates’ $173,142 average starting out. A Stanford GSB and a Northwestern Kellogg grad also made out with $500,000 and a $450,000 base respectively.