Salary Statistics of Harvard University Graduates

Founded in 1636, Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that enrolls thousands of students from various parts of the world every year. Hundreds of students from India go every year to USA to join this prestigious institution. Access to the best professors, motivational environment for studies, availability of undergraduate, postgraduate and fellowship programs, etc. are some of the features that attract students to this institution.  

Harvard Business School is one of the most sought after B-schools. The institution admits students who are fit for Harvard’s excellence. Hence, you may need to be exceptional in academics and various other streams to get admitted to this Business school. Is it worth becoming a Harvard graduate? You would know it is, if you analyze the salaries of the Harvard graduates in the past few years.

Annual Salaries

Even though the Great Recession was already underway in 2008, most Harvard graduates had received jobs before the market crashed. Harvard MBAs across the world reported record statistics and bonus averaging $144,261 in 2008. Five years later, in 2013, the pay was nearly $6,000 less. However, the reason for this decrease is considered to be ‘industry mix’. In simple terms, more Harvard students have moved from finance to technology industries over the last few years. Unlike the financial sector, tech startups that recruit the B-school students offer lower base salaries and sign-on bonuses. However, they have hand out stock and other back-end bonuses, which is not calculated in the traditional salary-and-bonus system. The compensation metrics do not include equity gains such as stock options, which is now one of the potentially significant parts of income for business graduates in the tech sector.

Three Year Salaries

According to The Financial Times’ ranking of the best MBA programs, Harvard University remains to be in the first place with the highest average statistics three years after graduation: $179,910. This amount is almost double their pre-MBA pay.

Twenty Year Salaries

It is evident that the graduates from Harvard Business School make more money over the course of their careers than business graduates from lower-ranked universities. According to a research by Bloom berg Businessweek, the difference is more than $1 million, over a period of 20 years. Harvard Business School graduates earned about $3.6 million in base pay and bonuses over the course of their 20-year career.

According to the salary statistics after three months post-graduation of class of 2014, published by the Harvard Business School, the median base salary of those who are employed in consulting is $135,000, financial services is $130,000, manufacturing is $120,000, technology is $120,000, and software is $125,000.

Due to the high salaries drawn by the Harvard graduates, the B-school remains to be the most preferred education institution in the world.