This might be contrary to popular belief, but the average years of post-bachelor's work experience for an MBA entrant is only four years. Students with many years of experience at the top business schools are usually in the executive MBA programs or part-time MBA programs with executive MBA students having the most experience. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools/articles/how-much-work-experience-do-i-need-for-mba-programs Global MBA Rankings https://rankings.ft.com/rankings/2859/global-mba-ranking-2021 Online MBA Rankings https://rankings.ft.com/rankings/2860/online-mba-ranking-2021 Executive MBA Rankings https://rankings.ft.com/rankings/2848/executive-mba-ranking-2020 Some things that I noticed. Some of the schools on the online MBA list are on the global and executive MBA lists, so it makes it easier to do a comparison. Online students generally saw smaller salary increases than global (traditional) and executive students. Executive students saw smaller salary increases than global (traditional) students, but they typically enter their degree programs earning more because they have more work experience.
I went to one of the schools on this list (I did the full-time MBA at UT Dallas) and remember completing the FT graduate salary surveys 2-3 years later. One big caveat with FT rankings salary data is they are PPP adjusted to account for local prices. So if you live in a cheap place like India, China, etc, they multiply the salary by X times amount. I am pretty sure when I entered my Canadian salary they adjusted it upwards to account for the difference in living standards in Canada. Problem with PPP is a lot of times the standard of living of MBAs is pretty similar whether you live in Toronto or New York or Shanghai. Meaning your consumption choices like cars, house, etc will be different from the average in the population. So while on average living in India might be 1/3 the cost, for an MBA grad living in a big Indian city like Mumbai, the cost might be the same as a developed country because they might buy foreign vehicles, etc that cost the same throughout the world. PPP is the major issue with the FT that makes the China/India salaries listed unbelievably high, when in fact the real $ amount is significantly lower (maybe just a quarter or a third of what's listed). US News is a bit more reliable for $ salary stats. Lastly, the Online and Executive MBA salaries are harder to read because the salaries there to a certain extent are based on the quality of the entering class who are already successful in their careers. So it isn't the school experience that boosted their salary, they were already in that trajectory. Just my 2cents.
