Foster School Has More MBAs Gaining Tech Employment Than Any Other B-School

The University of Washington’s Foster School of Business has become the leading B-school in tech employment. According to the 2016 employment reports, more MBAs at Foster took tech jobs than at any other school—outpacing even Silicon Valley schools such as Stanford GSB and the University of California, Berkeley. In fact, Foster sent more than half (52 percent) of its MBA graduates into the tech sector, that’s a 9 percent increase over last year and a 13.2 percent lead over the next closest school.

The question is how are some schools gaining more tech employment for their MBAs than others? According to Robert Dammon, dean of Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business who spoke with the Silicon Valley Business Journal, it’s about where business schools send their students for job experience.

“Some schools long ago saw the need to travel to the coast to get a sense of the Silicon Valley-Bay Area ecosystem; more and more are following their lead, making such pilgrimages de rigueur for the best programs,” he stated.

For example, U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business sent 38.8 percent of its 2016 MBA class into tech while Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business sent 33 percent of its 2016 MBA class into the same industry—coming in second and third on the list respectively. But while neither school could compare to Foster’s 52 percent of MBAs in tech, that doesn’t mean Foster led the field in all areas. Foster’s graduating class sent a total of only 105 MBAs into tech employment, whereas Stanford, who has an 825 member MBA class, sent 272 MBAs into tech for a larger overall output.

And if money is a larger consideration for a career, then Stanford is a better choice with the highest median base salary of $130,000. Still, Foster wasn’t far behind with a mean base salary of $113,241 and a mean sign-on bonus of $28,000.

regions: Seattle

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