Columbia MBA Class of 2013 placements: $310K highest salary

This year’s highest paid MBA at Columbia Business School landed a $310,000 base salary at a private equity firm, significantly exceeding the $240,000 highest pay last year also in private equity. A PE firm also paid the highest bonus to a Columbia graduate this year: a massive $300,000. Read on for more insights from Columbia Business Schools’ 2013 employment report.

Highlights

The school reported that the highest starting salary in manufacturing was $230,000, the highest in internet services was $240,000, and the highest in investment management was $225,000.
The higher-end bonuses reported by Columbia MBAs were $145,000 in management consulting, $135,000 in investment banking, $200,000 in hedge funds, $167,500 in investment management, $170,000 in consumer products manufacturing, $118,000 in internet services and e-commerce, and $100,000 in real estate.
Big shift away from finance for Columbia. This year the school sent 37.9% of its class into financial services, down from 41.8% last year. In 2007—the year before the financial meltdown—Columbia sent 56% of its MBA graduates into finance.
Finance placements were lukewarm overall. Percentage of MBAs going into investment banking and brokerage fell to 18.6% from 21.0% in 2012, while the percentage of grads landing jobs in diversified financial services was down to 2.7% from 3.3%. Even the number of MBAs going into the highly lucrative private equity sector shrank, to 3.2% of the class from 4.3% last year.
Consulting also down. 29.7% of this year’s grads ventured into the consulting industry, down from 32.6% in 2012.
Hiring in media and technology on the up – employed 13.2% of this year’s MBAs at Columbia, up from 8.3% last year.
Most highly paid positions right out of school at Columbia were in management consulting where the median base pay was $135,000–exactly the same median as other top schools are reporting–and ranged from a low of $90,000 to a high of $200,000. The median bonus paid in consulting was pegged at $25,000.
PE came in second with median base pay of $132,500, with a low of $67,000 and the class high base salary of $310,000. Median bonuses in private equity were $30,000. MBA jobs managing money in hedge funds, mutual funds and fund of funds—a catchall category in investment management for Columbia—racked in median base salaries of $125,000, ranging from a low of $75,000 to a high of $175,000, with a median bonus of $55,000, the highest of any sector.
The lowest starting salary received by a Columbia MBA this year was just $44,000–for a job in the education/government/non-profit sectors.