Columbia and Ross Release Employment Reports

Columbia Business School and University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business have released their Class of 2016 employment reports.

Unsurprisingly, neither group of alums has had a hard time finding work. Ninety-seven and 98 percent of Columbia and Ross MBAs respectively received job offers within three months of graduating.

Alums from both schools also tended to end up with competitive salaries in their new jobs. Columbia reported that 2016 alums had a median base salary of $125,000. Meanwhile, two-thirds received signing bonuses averaging $25,000.

Announcing their employment report, Ross pointed out that their alums’ median total compensation of $150,606 lagged behind only three other schools: Harvard, Stanford and Wharton. That figure is up slightly from last year’s $149,000.

At both Ross and Columbia, the most popular industries were consulting, finance and technology. However, the distribution of jobs between those industries differed significantly between the schools.

At Ross, 32.2 percent of grads went into consulting. Technology was the second most common industry, at 20.4 percent, while financial services was third at 13.6 percent.

For Columbia alums, financial services came in first at 36.9 percent. Consulting trailed narrowly at 34.5 percent, and “media and technology” was far behind at 9.8 percent.

Those trends are almost exactly in line with Columbia’s 2015 data, where consulting, finance and media/technology accounted for 37.1, 35.0 and 9.8 percent of graduate’s jobs respectively.

However, comparing 2016’s numbers to those from 2006 reveals a mass exodus from financial services to consulting.

Ten years ago, 56 percent of alums took jobs in financial services, compared to only 19 percent in consulting. On the other hand, media and technology employment has barely risen, from 6 percent a decade ago.

At Columbia, the top two employers were McKinsey & Company and Bain & Company. Likewise, Ross grads’ biggest employer was PricewaterhouseCoopers, hiring 120 students and alums across all Ross degrees in 2016.

On the other hand, Ross’s second-biggest employer overall was Amazon, reflecting the high portion of alums who took jobs in the technology industry. The 84 students and alums Amazon employed included 31 MBA grads, making the company the largest employer for Ross’s MBA Class of 2016.

The schools’ employment reports also include data on student internships.

For example, Columbia’s statistics on this year’s Class of 2017 internships show the central role the school plays in opening up internship opportunities: 4 out of every 5 interns report their internships came from “school-facilitated opportunities” – most commonly, on-campus interviews.

The employment reports cover several other types of information that can be useful for getting a better feel for the schools – and Columbia even has a bonus of 12 additional historical reports available on their website!

For a more in-depth look, see the Columbia reports here and the Ross report here.