Consulting · figures from each school’s own report
BCG salary: what the hiring numbers say
Boston Consulting Group is the largest single recruiter at the schools that count their hires: first or joint first employer at 5 of the 7 schools that publish numbers.
Paid back after graduation in
3.7 years
Total cost $417,730 · 10-year NPV $343,094
| Tuition and fees, whole program | $187,372 |
| Living budget | $72,858 |
| Salary given up, 21 months | $157,500 |
| Total cost | $417,730 |
| Salary after: salary, consulting | $190,000 |
| Signing bonus × share receiving it | $24,900 |
| 10-year net present value | $343,094 |
| Return on the cost (present values) | 83% |
US dollars at the ECB rate of the last update. Raises of 5% a year with the MBA and 3% without, discounted at 5%, before tax. How this is calculated.
Built by Radif Partners · figures checked · Method · Editorial policy
Boston Consulting Group does not publish what it pays MBA hires, and no government file we could read gives a BCG offer, so this page has no BCG salary figure as such. It has something close. Among the schools on this site that publish hire counts by employer, BCG is the first or joint first employer at 5 of 7; Chicago Booth alone reports 52 BCG hires, against 35 for McKinsey and 30 for Bain. Chicago Booth reports a consulting median of $190,000, which is the best public proxy for the BCG base offer in the United States. BCG's own site gives the scale of the firm: 33,500 employees and $14.4 billion of annual revenue, about $430,000 of revenue per person by our division. At Dartmouth Tuck, the payback of the degree on that consulting salary is 3.7 years for a person earning $90,000 before.
BCG leads the hiring counts
Few schools publish how many graduates joined each employer, but those that do tell a consistent story. Among them, BCG has the most hires, or shares the first place, at 5 of 7. The table gives the three large strategy firms side by side for each school that counts, with the consulting median that school reports.
| School | BCG | McKinsey | Bain | First employer listed | Consulting median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago Booth | 52 | 35 | 30 | Boston Consulting Group | $190,000 |
| Columbia | 51 | 36 | 17 | Boston Consulting Group | $190,000 |
| Kellogg | 41 | 23 | 22 | Boston Consulting Group | $190,000 |
| MIT Sloan | 26 | 20 | 12 | Boston Consulting Group | $190,000 |
| Michigan Ross | 16 | 16 | 7 | Boston Consulting Group | $190,000 |
| NYU Stern | 6 | 14 | 10 | McKinsey & Company | $175,000 |
| Vanderbilt Owen | 3 | not counted | not counted | Amazon | $175,000 |
Summed across those schools, BCG accounts for 195 hires, McKinsey 144 and Bain 98. At Chicago Booth, BCG hires are about 8.2% of the class. The schools are large American programs, so the result describes BCG's recruiting in the United States; outside it, 15 schools name BCG without numbers. The full count across all firms is on consulting firms that hire MBAs.
Two cautions apply. A school's count covers graduates who accepted an offer and reported it, so a firm hiring sponsored students back from leave, or graduates who answered late, may be undercounted. And a count for one class can move by a few hires from one year to the next, enough to swap the first and second firm at a given school. The pattern across schools is more solid than any single ranking within one of them.
Chicago Booth or Columbia: the faster payback for you
Higher 10-year value
Chicago Booth
| Chicago Booth payback | 4.1 years |
| Columbia payback | 4.5 years |
| Chicago Booth 10-year NPV | $260,413 |
| Columbia 10-year NPV | $223,915 |
From hires to a salary proxy
A school whose consulting hires are dominated by one or two large firms reports their base offer as its median, because most of its consulting graduates received it. The schools in the table report consulting medians between $175,000 and $190,000, and most give the top figure. That is the strongest public evidence of BCG's American base offer to MBA graduates, but it remains a median of all consulting hires at a school, not a figure published by the firm. We found no government source that could replace it: the Department of Labor's visa wage files, which sometimes show a firm's declared wage, could not be downloaded when we wrote.
Base salary is one part of pay. Signing bonuses and the yearly performance bonus are not in the consulting lines of the reports. The national consultant salary figures from the BLS show the other end of the scale: a median of $101,860 for all management analysts in May 2025.
The firm in its own figures
BCG's overview page states 33,500 employees and $14.4 billion of annual revenue, with offices in more than 100 cities in over 50 countries. Its history page names Bruce Henderson as founder and chief executive from 1963 to 1980 and dates the growth share matrix, the firm's best-known idea, to 1968. Dividing revenue by people gives about $430,000 per employee, all staff included. That ratio is what pays the base, the bonuses and the offices, and it is why the large strategy firms can offer an MBA hire a base 1.9 times the national median of the profession.
Paying for the route: one school as an example
The calculator at the top of this page is set on Dartmouth Tuck, one of the schools that name BCG and send 41% of the class into consulting, at a consulting median of $190,000. For a person earning $90,000 before the degree, the total cost with the salary given up is $417,730, and the payback on the consulting salary 3.7 years after graduation, on the assumptions of our model. Change the school or the salary to test your own case; the consulting ranking does it for every school at once, and MBB compares BCG with its two peers.