Finance · figures from each school’s own report
Investment banking after an MBA: the associate seat
NYU Stern sends 28% of its class to investment banks, and nearly every American school reports the same $175,000 median base for them.
Securities, commodities and financial services sales agents: U.S. median, May 2025
$78,660
$78,660 sits between the 25th percentile and the median
| 25th percentile | $56,540 |
| Median | $78,660 |
| 75th percentile | $129,950 |
| Workers counted | 489,570 |
All employers and levels together: a post-MBA consultant at a strategy firm is paid well above this median, as the school reports show. How this is calculated.
Built by Radif Partners · figures checked · Method · Editorial policy
An MBA graduate joins an investment bank as an associate, the rung above the analysts hired from college, and works in a deal team on mergers, acquisitions and capital raising. The base salary is set by the banks for the whole associate class: NYU Stern, Columbia, Wharton, Booth, Yale and Tuck all report the same $175,000 median for investment banking in the class of 2025. What differs is the number of seats. NYU Stern placed 28% of its class in banks, Yale SOM placed 18% of its class in banks, Columbia placed 17.1% of its class in banks, against 3% at Stanford. A signing bonus comes on top, which reports give for the whole class only (Wharton $30,000 median, for 48% of graduates), and the year-end bonus that makes up a large part of banking pay appears in no report. For a person earning $90,000 before the degree, the payback at the large banking schools runs from 4.2 years to 4.7 years after graduation.
The seat between analysts and vice presidents
A bank's deal team is a small pyramid. Analysts, hired straight from college, build the spreadsheets and the slides. The associate, the seat an MBA graduate takes, checks that work, drafts the parts of the pitch that require judgment and keeps the transaction moving between the client, the lawyers and the other banks. Vice presidents and managing directors win the mandate and speak for the bank. The associate is usually on several live deals at once, in a coverage group (an industry such as healthcare or technology) or a product group (mergers and acquisitions, leveraged finance, equity capital markets), and the weeks follow the deals rather than the calendar.
That workload is the main trade of the job. The reports measure what graduates are paid, not how many hours they work, and no school publishes a figure for hours. What they do show is the size of the intake, and banking hires more MBA graduates than any other part of finance.
| # | School | Share of class | Graduates, about | Salary | Payback | 10-year NPV | Fit score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chicago Booth | 8.3% | 53 | $175,000 | 4.1 years | $260,413 | 63 |
| 2 | Yale SOM | 18% | 66 | $175,000 | 4.3 years | $234,097 | 60 |
| 3 | UCLA Anderson | 13.3% | 38 | $175,000 | 4.2 years | $245,041 | 60 |
| 4 | Wharton | 14.2% | 126 | $175,000 | 4.3 years | $240,066 | 58 |
| 5 | NYU Stern | 28% | 94 | $175,000 | 4.7 years | $194,432 | 55 |
| 6 | Berkeley Haas | 6.5% | 18 | $175,000 | 4.2 years | $252,244 | 54 |
| 7 | Columbia | 17.1% | 168 | $175,000 | 4.5 years | $223,915 | 50 |
| 8 | Dartmouth Tuck | 13% | 40 | $175,000 | 4.3 years | $234,883 | 48 |
| 9 | CMU Tepper | 4.5% | 6 | $175,000 | 4.1 years | $258,237 | 46 |
| 10 | Kellogg | 6.4% | 34 | $175,000 | 4.3 years | $241,009 | 42 |
Our ranking for investment banking puts Chicago Booth first. Since the base is the same almost everywhere, the order is decided mostly by the share placed and by the cost of the program. Sort the table in the banking ranking on share alone and NYU Stern comes first with 28%.
Base salary: one rate for the whole associate class
Read across the reports, the median base for banking is a single number: $175,000 at Chicago Booth, Yale SOM, UCLA Anderson, Wharton, NYU Stern, Berkeley Haas and Columbia. Banks set the first-year associate salary for everyone hired that year, so the school does not change it. This is a median of base pay only. It leaves out the signing bonus, which the reports give for the whole class, and the year-end bonus, which nobody knows at graduation.
The signing bonus is reported school-wide: Wharton's median is $30,000 for the 48% of the class who received one, NYU Stern's $35,000. The calculators add it in the first year, weighted by the share who received one. Try a banking bonus of your own in the mini-calculator below: it changes the first year a lot and the payback a little.
A signing bonus, on average
Expected value
$15,000
| Chance of getting one | 50% |
The model counts the bonus once, in the first year, times the share receiving it.
Where the associates come from
New York schools place the largest shares. NYU Stern sends 28% of its class to banks and lists J.P. Morgan (14), Bank of America (7), Goldman Sachs & Co. (7) among its main employers; Columbia sends 17.1%, with JPMorgan Chase & Co. (22), Goldman Sachs (11), Bank of America (10), Evercore (8). Outside New York, Yale (18%), UCLA (13.3%) and Tuck (13%) place more than a tenth of their class in banking. The two most famous schools are not banking schools by share: Harvard puts 6% of its class there and Stanford 3%, because their graduates in finance lean toward funds.
Schools also count banking twice in some reports, once in the industry table and once in the job function table, and the two lines differ. Columbia's function line for investment banking is 19.1% against 17.1% in the industry segment, and NYU Stern's 24.2% against 28%. The function counts what people do, the industry who employs them: a banker hired by a bank's internal strategy team is in one and not the other. We rank on the industry segment and show both on the school pages.
NYU Stern or Columbia: the faster payback for you
Higher 10-year value
Columbia
| NYU Stern payback | 4.7 years |
| Columbia payback | 4.5 years |
| NYU Stern 10-year NPV | $194,432 |
| Columbia 10-year NPV | $223,915 |
The wider occupation, measured by the BLS
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has no line for investment bankers alone. The nearest occupation, securities, commodities and financial services sales agents, counted 489,570 jobs in May 2025, with a median wage of $78,660, a bottom quarter under $56,540 and a top quarter above $129,950. It mixes brokers, advisers and bankers of every level and firm size, so it sits far below the MBA associate base. It is the right reference for a different question: what this kind of work pays outside the bulge-bracket and elite boutique banks that recruit on MBA campuses. Use the calculator at the top to place a salary of your own in that distribution.
Is the degree needed to become an associate?
Not always: banks promote their own analysts to associate after a few years, and some hire experienced professionals directly. The MBA is the usual entry for people coming from another field, through the paid summer internship between the two years of an American program. For a person already in banking, the gain is smaller, because the salary given up is high and the post-MBA base is fixed. The finance overview compares banking with the buy side, and the payback calculator shows how a loan changes the result.
Securities, commodities and financial services sales agents: where a salary sits in the U.S.
Position
below the median
| 25th percentile | $56,540 |
| Median | $78,660 |
| 75th percentile | $129,950 |
BLS, May 2025, all employers and levels.