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MBA Pay: The Haul of a Lifetime

Over the course of a career, how much do most MBAs earn? A lot depends on their pre-MBA experience, and a lot depends on where they got their degree. To give readers an idea of what they can expect, Bloomberg Businessweek asked PayScale to crunch the numbers for the top b-schools in our 2008 ranking of full-time MBA programs. The table below shows the median pay for MBA graduates of each program with various levels of experience in their chosen careers. Most individuals with less than two years' experience switched careers post-MBA; the figures for the five-year mark represent the pay of typical MBA graduates, who obtain their degrees after accumulating a few years? experience and use it to advance an existing career.

(The ranks in the column labeled "Career Pay Rank-2009" have been corrected.)

Methodology Note: The salary data in this table were supplied by Payscale, which collects the information from individuals through online pay comparison tools. For each school, PayScale tallied the median cash compensation—including base pay and bonuses, but excluding stock and options—for MBA graduates at five points in their careers. The data are based on a sample of 23,000 MBA graduates; most of the medians shown represent approximately 100 to 300 actual salaries per school. Bloomberg Businessweek then used the salary data and average annual growth rates over each five-year span to calculate a very rough estimate of earnings over the entire 20-year period, labeled here as "Estimated Career Pay."