Wharton Reveals 2018 MBA Employment Report, Announces $25 Mil Gift
Lots of news out of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania recently. Employment statistics have been published for the most recent graduating class, and a big donation will fund a cool new building dedicated to entrepreneurship in West Philadelphia as well as more international scholarships for undergraduates.
Here’s what’s going on at the Wharton School.
Penn Employment Report (2018)
The 2018 MBA Career Report revealed a slight increase in job offers and salaries with finance drawing in more students than ever. In 2018, 36.9 percent of full-time MBA graduates went into financial services (up from 33 percent last year). Consulting lured the second most graduates at 25 percent, down from 28 percent in 2017. As for technology—the third most sought-after industry—this year there was a small dip down to 14.9 percent from 16 percent in 2017.
Employment Summary
Overall, of the 77.9 percent of Wharton MBAs seeking employment, 98.4 percent received a job offer 90 days post-graduation, and 94.6 percent accepted. For the remaining 17.2 percent not seeking employment—140 students—84 returned to their current company (60 percent), 34 started their own company (24 percent), 17 postponed their job search (12 percent), and five students gave another reason (3 percent).
As for top employers, many prominent companies hired two or more graduates including Accenture Strategy, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Bain & Company, Deloitte Consulting, McKinsey & Company, Microsoft, and Tesla.
Salaries Rise
Wharton MBA salaries continued their climb, with the school reporting a $5,000 increase in total median base salary, bringing that figure to $135,000 in 2018. The highest median salary—$180,000—went to graduates heading into professional services, followed by venture capital at $175,000 and hedge fund managers at $162,000.
As for regional differences in salaries, the 42.7 percent of Wharton MBA graduates who accepted positions in the Northeastern United States commanded a median salary of $140,000. Another 23.2 percent of grads headed to the West, where the median annual salary was $135,000. The Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S., with its median annual salary of $139,000, drew the third largest percentage of grads, at 7.7 percent. Interestingly, those who took jobs in the Midwest and South reported the biggest paydays, with a median salary of $150,000. This was trailed by the Southwest, with a median annual salary of $145,000.
Another 11.7 percent of the graduating class sought post-graduation employment outside the United States, where salaries on the whole were lower. In Latin America, the median annual salary is $92,000. Salaries are slightly better in Europe, where the median is $119,000, and best in Asia, at $126,000.
$25 Million Gift for Scholarships and New Hall
Right on the heels of publishing its employment statistics last week, the Wharton School also announced a $25 million gift. The transformative gift will go toward constructing Tangen Hall, the first-ever dedicated space for cross-campus entrepreneurship at the University of Pennsylvania. It will also establish an international scholarship fund.
“This gift not only represents a profound commitment to Penn and Wharton student financial aid; it also energizes our entire campus community through Tangen Hall, a game-changing facility for innovation, entrepreneurship, and technology,” Wharton Dean Geoffrey Garrett said in a press release.
Nicolai Tangen, W’92
Alumnus Donation
Nicolai Tangen, the founder of London-based investment partnership AKO Capital and 1992 Wharton undergraduate alumnus, encouraged the AKO foundation to donate as part of Wharton’s More Than Ever fundraising campaign.
“Katja and I are continually inspired by Penn students and pleased to have the opportunity to engage with them and set them up for success,” Tangen says. “We look forward to their many achievements in the years ahead and to witnessing how this new building will bring together the next generation of entrepreneurs, leaders, and innovators to share their talents with one another and for the greater good.”
Tangen Hall
Tangen Hall will be located at 40th and Sansom Street, offering students almost 70,000 square-feet of space to pursue entrepreneurial goals. The hall brings together students from across the university to participate in the new Venture Lab. Also, the building will become the new home of many entrepreneurship-focused programs including:
- Penn Wharton Entrepreneurship
- Goergen Entrepreneurial Management Program
- Weiss Tech House
- Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center
- Wharton Small Business Development Center
- The Master’s Level Integrated Product Design Program
Tangen Hall will have dozens of meeting and collaboration spaces for students, retail space for student ventures, a test kitchen, a maker lab with 3D printers and laser cutters, a VR cave, and a café.
“Tangen Hall marks a new chapter for the entrepreneurial community at Penn and in Philadelphia, providing a central hub for the groundbreaking innovations that happen here every day,” Wharton Vice Dean of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Karl Ulrich says. “This physical space will allow faculty to more strongly support students who turn ideas into outcomes that will transform business for years to come.”
Construction will begin in 2019 with completion slated for 2020.
International Scholarship Fund
Beyond Tangen Hall, the $25 million will also go toward a new Katja and Nicolai Tangen International Endowed Scholarship, which will provide funding for international undergraduate students. The goal is to help students who could otherwise not afford a Penn education.
It’s the fourth scholarship made possible thanks to the AKO Foundation and the Tangens. So far, they’ve supported a total of 22 Penn students since 2012.
“We are profoundly grateful to Nicolai and Katja Tangen for their extraordinary commitment to extend opportunities for entrepreneurship to all Penn students,” Penn President Amy Gutmann says. “We are also grateful that Nicolai and Katja are expanding their steadfast scholarship support, enabling the best students from every part of the world to attend Penn, to thrive in their studies, and to serve communities worldwide.”
This article has been edited and republished with permissions from Clear Admit.
UCLA Hosts Worldwide Alumni, Startups, and More – Los Angeles News
It’s Friday! Let’s dig into the most recent news coming out of the Los Angeles metro from the past week that isn’t about the Lakers or Dodgers.
Worldwide Welcome Weeks – UCLA Anderson
UCLA Anderson celebrates its annual ‘Worldwide Welcome Weeks’ this month with events designed to introduce new alumni to their regional chapters or affinity groups, and engage them with leaders and thinkers in their home cities.
Members gained valuable insight with behind the scenes tours of successful businesses along with more informal meet-ups with fellow graduates.
Here in the states, alumni networks gathered in such cities as San Diego, Irvine, Marina del Rey, Portland, and New York City for events ranging from a tour of Petco stadium to an exploration into the present and future of blockchain technology.
Internationally, students met in Madrid to discuss the future of sustainable strategies in business, and in Sydney and Shanghai for happy hours. Alumni in Vancouver got the chance to give back with a day of service at Quest Food Exchange.
For more on each regional event, including photos, please visit UCLA Anderson’s news page.
Life is a Startup – USC Marshall
Professor Noam Wasserman of the USC Marshall School of Business recently published his book, Life Is a Startup: What Founders Can Teach us About Making Choices and Managing Change, from Stanford University Press.
Wasserman’s previous book, The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup, landed at a number one spot on Amazon’s bestseller list in the management genre. Wasserman also received the Academy of Management’s Impact on Practice award.
Formerly a professor at Harvard Business School, Wasserman has over the course of his career studied founders of startups to discover not only their common characteristics, but also how their personal and creative lives evolved over the course of their careers.
In a recent profile with USC Marshall Wasserman poses the question, “How do we prevent our fear of failure from torpedoing our making life changes? How can we gain knowledge and motivation from our failures rather than having them stop us in our tracks?”
On the flip side are the perils of success. You reach your dream, and then all sorts of challenges are introduced. Your success has actually heightened a bunch of problems for you. Planning ahead for the perils of success is key to being able to have them be true successes.
Life is a Startup is Wasserman’s exploration of how lessons learned during the startup of successful ventures can be applied to life experiences as well, particularly in times of difficulty or change. You can read the rest of the USC Marshall profile of the author and professor here.
24th Annual Economic Forecast – Mihaylo College of Business and Economics
In partnership with the Orange County Business Council (OCBC) and U.S. Bank, the Mihaylo College of Business and Economics‘ Woods Center for Economic Analysis will host its 24th Annual Economic Forecast.
Examining the three-year outlook for Orange County, Southern California, and also the domestic and global economies, the forecast promises to deliver vital information from leading academic and business professionals in the region.
Home prices, the unemployment rate, the general outlook on current economic conditions for business managers will be among the topics of discussion. Opening talks will be given by Provost Emeritus Anil Puri, former dean of Mihaylo College, and Associate Professor of Economics Mira Farka, a former senior economist at Deutsche Bank.
Other speakers include Lucy Dunn, president and CEO of the OCBC and former director of the California Department of Housing and Community Development, and Michael Camuñez, president, CEO and co-founder of strategic consulting firm Monarch Global Strategies LLC.
Register for the event today, which will be held at the Hotel Irvine on Thursday, October 25, 2018.
UC Irvine Introduces New Entrepreneurship Degree
Late last month, the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California-Irvine has revealed its new Master of Innovation and Entrepreneurship degree. This UC Irvine entrepreneurship Master’s program will officially begin in fall 2019.
What are the Best MBA Programs by Specialty?
Each year, U.S. News and World Report looks at the top business schools around the country to decide which offer the best MBA programs. The goal is to help MBA candidates most effectively choose the best MBA degree to help them achieve their goals based on their interests and strengths. The problem is that there are hundreds of programs and it can be difficult to weed out all the noise to get to the information that you want most.
That’s why the U.S. News and World Report decided to break down all of their findings into a more easily consumable ranking. They outlined the top MBA programs by discipline to help you quickly and easily find the school you’re looking for. Each of the schools on the list was chosen based on alumni interviews, schools statistics, research data, and more.
We’ve broken down the results below along with crucial information about each school listed and where you can learn more information.
MIT Sloan Debunks Entrepreneur Myths, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
The 20-Year-Old Entrepreneur is a Lie – MIT Sloan Newsroom
MIT Sloan School of Business professor Pierre Azoulay and Ph.D. student Daniel Kim used a new working paper as an opportunity to debunk the myth of the 20-year-old Silicon Valley tech-prodigy entrepreneur. The reality is that the average age of successful entrepreneurs veers closer to 42. Azoulay elaborates:
“If you knew nothing else, and you had two identical ideas, one proposed by a very young person, one proposed by a middle-aged person, and that’s the only thing you have to go on, you would be better off—if you wanted to predict success—betting on a middle-aged person.”
Kim adds: “In theory, we know that with age a lot of benefits accumulate. For instance, you get a lot of human capital from experience, you also get more financial resources as you age, as well as social connections, all of which will likely boost your odds of success as an entrepreneur.”
Read more about the duo’s research here.
Case Study: Can This Japanese Snack Food Company Break into the U.S. Market? – Harvard Business Review
As part of a fictionalized case study, HBR recently published a profile on Kenko USA, the American subsidiary of Japan’s largest rice cracker producer, about its ongoing plans to enter the American market. Kenko USA hopes to become synonymous with rice crackers much in the same way that Kikkoman became inextricably linked with soy sauce.
In 2012, Riku Nakamura relocated from Tokyo to San Mateo, California to oversee the launch of Kenko’s first foreign subsidiary. According to the article, “Riku knew that the key was to expand beyond Asian supermarkets and grocery stores’ “international” sections and get Kenko crackers into the snack aisles of mainstream U.S. food outlets, but his team’s efforts had yet to bear fruit.”
You can read the entire case study here.
Hybrid Strategy Leaves Auto Industry Leaders Playing Catch-up, Professor Says – D’Amore McKim News & Research
There’s quite a bit of chatter within the auto industry about the so-called “hybrid trap” in which established industry leaders have been forced to catch up to the hybrid strategies of more aggressive startups to varying degrees of success.
Northeastern University D’Amore-McKim School of Business‘ Jean C. Tempel professor of entrepreneurship and innovation Fernando Suarez explored this phenomenon in detail as part of an MIT Sloan Management Review article. He elaborates:
“Most established corporations follow the hybrid approach because it gives them peace of mind. It allows incumbents to convince themselves that they’re responding to technology-driven transformation in their industry when, in fact, they’re losing ground. They fall back on learned patterns, which slows development. When you are serious about going the route of new technology, you have to rethink all of your designs and processes.”
Read more about Suarez’s research here.
Starting a Business Straight Out of School? How HBS Supports Student Entrepreneurship
This coming weekend, Harvard Business School (HBS) will host an annual Entrepreneurship Conference sponsored by its own homegrown Entrepreneurship Club. The conference brings together hundreds of participants including “founders, joiners, and venture capitalists,” all of whom hope to connect through a smorgasbord of lectures, panels, chats, and networking sessions.
This year’s conference, scheduled for Saturday, March 31, is expected to draw more than 500 participants, including many top professors and professionals holding court on a variety of topics. Three keynote lectures will be given by CEOs and founders from Catalant Technologies, Strava, and edX. Strava’s Michael Horvath, who is also a professor of entrepreneurship at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, will share his experiences having held several high-level roles at multiple startups.
Tuck Professor and Strava Co-Founder Michael Horvath will give one of the Entrepreneurship Conference’s keynote addresses.
In addition to the keynote lectures, the conference is also stacked with nine different panels. Some will include general discussions on topics such as starting a business during your MBA program and financing your startup. Others are more specific, covering some of the hottest fields in entrepreneurship right now. Examples of these include “Blockchain: The Next Transformative Technology?” and “AI/ML: Artificial Intelligence in Diverse Contexts.” Finally, attendees will also get to take part in a venture capitalist meet-and-greet and a networking lunch and cocktail hour.
HBS is extremely supportive of entrepreneurship, according to Jim Aisner, the school’s director of media and public relations. He spoke at length about the myriad ways in which HBS is a fantastic place for both seasoned and budding entrepreneurs, underscoring the range of support Harvard’s large entrepreneurial community offers to those looking to start their own businesses.
“Entrepreneurship is a major component of life at HBS, with some 35 faculty members doing research, course development, mentoring/advising, and teaching in this area,” Aisner told Clear Admit.
Harvard’s program requires all first-year MBA students to take an entrepreneurship course, and there are also a large number of entrepreneurial-focused electives on offer in the second-year Elective Curriculum. In addition, the school boasts multiple conferences and events that reach programs outside the business school. “There is a whole ecosystem [at Harvard] promoting and nurturing entrepreneurship,” Aisner notes.
Significant Programming Supports HBS Student Entrepreneurs
HBS is also home to the Arthur Rock Center Accelerator, which helps selected teams develop their ventures over the course of the year. In addition, the Rock Accelerator offers summer fellowships to support students from the entire student body who seek to develop entrepreneurial ventures during the summer and hosts a semiannual conference that brings 100 alumni back to campus each year.
Rock Venture Partners is a program that lets small groups of students learn more about investing in startups by supporting Rock Accelerator teams as they go through pitching and starting their ventures. Then there is the Harvard Innovation Lab, or i-lab, a resource available to current students at any Harvard school interested in exploring innovation and entrepreneurship at any stage. “The Innovation Lab creates a hotbed of cross fertilization for teams from across the university,” says Aisner.
Given this supportive environment, it won’t come as a shock that many HBS students decide to start their own businesses rather than pursue a more traditional career path in their post-MBA life. Out of more than 900 students, eight percent of graduates from the Class of 2017 chose to start their own businesses upon graduation, up from six percent in the Class of 2016. Although this growth is indicative of a national trend toward more and more recent MBA grads founding startups, HBS outperforms many top schools in this regard. By comparison, at Chicago Booth just 3.2 percent of 2017 MBA grads went immediately into running their own startups. Meanwhile, at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, just 2.3 percent of the most recent graduating class founded businesses.
As another indicator of its commitment to fostering entrepreneurship, HBS will host its annual New Venture Competition on April 18th, which bestows more than $300,000 in prize money to outstanding new ventures. Contestants may apply in either the business track, with ventures that drive substantial market value, or the social enterprise track, with ventures that drive social change. This recent Clear Admit article noted that the social enterprise track received 69 entries this year, more than ever before.
Nationwide, more and more students have begun to pursue startups at all stages of their MBA careers. From this weekend’s student-led Entrepreneurship Conference to the wide range of related centers, faculty, and other support, HBS’s investment in nurturing its entrepreneurial students is clear.
