One of the advantages of top-tier MBA degrees is their portability – candidates from top schools often have the opportunity to work in any city they want. For certain industries such as automobile manufacturing, a location like Detroit is synonymous with the industry and is regarded as “the place to be” in terms of career growth. But what if there was a way to analyze what U.S. cities have to offer MBA students?
Utilizing data provided by MBAs across the nation, we are able to analyze metrics such as average compensation, the most common functional roles and industries, and the companies that hire a large number of MBAs in any major city in the United States. Eighth up in our analysis: Denver, Colorado.
(This entry is part of a series exploring such measures for various cities. You can find our other entries in the series here: Austin, Dallas, San Francisco, and Seattle.)
According to the sources SmartAsset, Numbeo, and Payscale, the average cost of living in Denver is approximately $2200/month, with the median rent of a one-bedroom being $1700/month. In terms of the average post-MBA salary in this city, the data indicates it is around $115,744 while the average post-MBA compensation is $148,678.
City ranks for three separate measures out of a total of 55 evaluated cities
When looking at the top ten industries of MBAs living in this city, Consulting leads the pack by a large margin with 20.3% of MBAs belonging to this industry, followed by Telecommunications and Arts, Media, News, Sports, & Entertainment with 10.1% and 8.7%, respectively. Hospitals, Medicine, & Healthcare Services and Technology, Internet, & Ecommerce trail at fourth and fifth with 7.2% and 5.8% This leaves Aerospace & Aviation (4.3%); Energy, Oil, Gas, and Utilities (4.3%); Food, Beverage, & Tobacco (4.3%); and Computer Services & Information Technology (2.9%) finishing off the list. Our other category, which constituted 31.88% of our data, included industries such as Consumer Products, Manufacturing, and Investment Management.
Now that it has been established what the popular industries for business students in Denver are, let’s take a look at the functions they are hired for. Consulting comes in first again with 18.8% followed by Marketing with 14.5% and Corporate Strategy with 11.6%. Business Development takes fourth place with 7.2% while Human Resources, Information Technology, Operations, and Product Management share fifth place with 4.3% each. Analytics & Data Science and Corporate Finance rounds out the list with 2.9% each while the Other category encapsulates 24.6%.
You may be wondering which employers are hiring for these MBA functions. According to the data, the top 5 employers are Deloitte Consulting (8.7%), Dish Network (8.7%), McKinsey & Company (7.2%), DaVita Healthcare Partners (4.3%), and Danone (4.3%).
However, when specifically looking at the top employers for the Consulting Industry, McKinsey & Company has 35.7% and Deloitte Consulting has 28.6% of all the MBAs in our dataset from this industry living in Denver. Trailing behind them is Analysis Group, Infosys, and PwC Advisory with 6.7% each. In contrast, Telecommunications—the next most common industry— has its top employers as Dish Network with 42.9%, Sling TV with 28.6%, and CenturyLink and Level 3 Communications with 3.81% each. Likewise, Arts, Media, News, Sports, & Entertainment has a different set of top employers from Consulting with Dish Network having 50.0%, CU Presents having 33.3%, and Sling TV having 16.7%.
The last question asked was which business schools have the most alumni working in this city. The University of Chicago Booth School of Business comes in first with the alumni making up 14.5% of the data. Northwestern Kellogg School of Management—another Illinois business school—makes up 8.7%. This is followed by Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder with 7.2%, University of Tennessee Haslam College of Business with 5.8%, and the University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business with 4.3%.
MBAs in Denver – City Guide:
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