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 technology, a location like Silicon Valley 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. Fifth up in our analysis: Houston, Texas.
(This entry is part of a series exploring such measures for various cities. You can find our other entries in the series here: Atlanta , Dallas, Los Angeles, and New York.)
According to the sources Numbeo and Apartment List, the average cost of living in Houston is approximately $1850/month, with the median rent of a one-bedroom being $970/month. In terms of the average post-MBA salary in this city, the data indicates it is around $118,916 while the average post-MBA compensation is $172,134.
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, Energy, Gas, Oil and Utilities leads the pack by a large margin with 37.1% of MBAs belonging to this industry, followed by Consulting and Technology, Internet, & Ecommerce with 21.4% and 7.5%, respectively. Investment Banking, Chemicals & Plastics, and Manufacturing trail at fourth, fifth, and sixth place with 5.7%, 4.4%, and 3.8%. This leaves Accounting & Audit; Aerospace & Aviation; Automotive, Transportation, & Logistics; and Aerospace & Aviation finishing off the list with 1.9% each. Our other category, which constituted almost 12.6% of our data, included industries such as Education, Investment Management, and Construction, Repair, & Maintenance.
Now that it has been established what the popular industries for business students in Houston are, let’s take a look at the functions they are hired for. Consulting comes in first with 24.5% followed by Corporate Finance with 9.4% and Operations with 8.8%. Engineering and Business Development take fourth and fifth place with 6.9% and 6.3%. Investment Banking comes in sixth place with 5.7% while Project Management and Sales share the seventh position, tyinging with 5%. Corporate Strategy and General Management rounds out the list with 4.4% each while the Other category encapsulates 19.5%.
You may be wondering which employers are hiring for these MBA functions. According to the data, the top 5 employers are Accenture (5.0%), Exxon Mobil (4.4%), McKinsey & Company (4.4%), Deloitte Consulting (3.1%), and Hewlett Packard Enterprise – HP (3.1%).
However, when specifically looking at the top employers for the Energy, Gas, Oil and Utilities Industry, Exxon Mobil has 11.9%, Cameron International has 6.8%, and Schlumberger has 6.8% of all the MBAs in our dataset from this industry living in Houston. Trailing behind them is Chevron and Memorial Resource Development with 5.1% each. In contrast, Consulting—the next most common industry— has its top employers as Accenture and McKinsey & Company with 20.6% each, Deloitte Consulting and KPMG with 8.8% each, and Schlumberger with 5.9%. Likewise, Technology, Internet, & Ecommerce has a different set of top employers with Hewlett Packard Enterprise – HP having 50%, Amazon having 16.7%, and Dell, Infosys, and Paycom tying for third place with 8.3% each.
The last question asked was which business schools have the most alumni working in this city. Rice University comes in first with the alumni making up 17% of the data. The University of Texas–Austin McCombs School of Business—another Texas business school— makes up 13.2%. This is followed by University of Chicago Booth School of Business with 9.4%, Harvard Business School with 8.2%, and Stanford Graduate School of Business with 3.8%.
MBAs of Houston – City Guide:
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