Interesting story- Everyone knows MBAs tend to be a confident bunch. But when does self-confidence veer into the Pollyannaish territory of completely unrealistic expectations? Business school applicants in the U.S. say they expect the MBA degree to lift their current salaries by a whopping 140%, to an average of $140,000 a year from their pre-MBA salaries of $58,000. If that increase sounds overly optimistic, candidates in many other countries have even greater expectations, according to a new survey of MBA candidates by QS TopMBA.com, an organization that holds admissions fairs for business schools. Prospective students in Switzerland said they anticipate post-MBA salaries of $200,000, which would reflect a 145% increase over pre-MBA pay of $82,000, the highest salaries of any MBA applicants in the world. MBA applicants from India expect the largest percentage increase. They believe the MBA degree will boost their pre-MBA pay by 369% to $112,000, from just $24,000 a year. The current pay of Indian candidates is among the lowest reported by any MBA applicants in the world. Only applicants in Nigeria reported lower salaries: $21,000 on average. In China, a country like India from which much of the growth in business education is occurring, MBA applicants expect the degree to provide a 245% increase in salary to $121,000 a year from only $35,000 a year currently. What makes the numbers especially optimistic is the fact that QS did not survey applicants to only the top schools but to a wider variety of business schools whose graduates tend to make considerably less than those at such schools as Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, London Business School, INSEAD and other top-ranked institutions. Yet, even in the best of all possible worlds, the average salaries at the highest ranked schools would fall well below the expectation of U.S. applicants for average salary of $140,000. Graduates of Harvard Business School reported average base salaries of $124,000 in 2012, for example. Only when you include the average signing bonus of $26,200 at HBS do you exceed the overall expectation—and that is for the graduates of Harvard Business School. At Georgetown University’s McDonough School, in contrast, the average starting salary last year was $99,799. Even adding the average signing bonus of some $24,100 would make an MBA graduate from McDonough fall some $16,000 short of the expected salary in the QS survey. Still, compared to 2012, there has been a general drop in candidates’ current earnings as well as their target salaries, according to the report. In the U.S., for example, applicants reported making $58,000 a year, down from $61,000 in 2012. A year earlier, MBA applicants expected to make $153,000 a year when they graduated. That expectation has fallen this year by $13,000 to $140,000 a year. In short, applicants in previous years were even less realistic than those polled in the past year. MBAs Expect A 140% Pay Increase From Degree | LinkedIn
MBA candidates tend to be an over confident bunch. I have a classmate/friend that has literally done nothing since we finished our MBAs five years ago and he will tell you he is "highly successful" and he fully believes that. He currently makes $30k/year, has lost a job and had two consulting contracts cut short because he is impossible to work with, but his confidence has never waned.
Even with all the education in the world from a highly rated school, if you have a personality that will peel paint off the wall and no professional skills; your utility and job prospects in the real world will be little to none.
This mainly because business schools feed you with unrealistic salary expectations. My alma mateur McGill publishes the same 134% salary increase sales pitch: Employment statistics | Desautels - McGill University According to them, the average starting salary is 115K. I completed my degree more than 15 years ago and still don't make that kind of money and this after a doctoral program and an accounting designation. My accounting association also was feeding unrealistic salary expectations, according to ACCA, the average accountant in Canada makes more than 100K but yet most positions that I was offered after I completed the ACCA certificate were in the 50K range. Bottom line is that business schools and professional associations publish inflated salaries to attract customers. Most of the surveys that they use for the calculation of these salaries are biased, graduates completing these surveys tend to be the over achievers while the ones that under achieve tend to ignore the surveys.
