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. Third up in our analysis: New York, New York.
(This entry is part of a series exploring such measures for various cities. You can find our other entries in the series here: Atlanta , Boston, Chicago, and Dallas.)
According to the sources Bungalow, Numbeo, and Apartment List, the average cost of living in New York is approximately $4800/month, with the median rent of a one-bedroom being $3800/month. In terms of the average post-MBA salary in this city, the data indicates it is around $128,711 while the average post-MBA compensation is $185,295.
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 25.1% of MBAs belonging to this industry, followed by Investment Banking and Technology, Internet, & Ecommerce with 15.6% and 11.9%, respectively. Diversified Financial Services, Consumer Products, and Investment Management trail at fourth, fifth, and sixth place with 9.2%, 4.9%, and 4.8%. This leaves Pharma, Medical Devices, & Biotech (3.7%); Arts, Media, Sports, News, & Entertainment (2.7%); Retail (2.6%); and Private Equity (2.4%) finishing off the list. Our other category, which constituted 17.1% of our data, included industries such as Real Estate, Insurance, and Education.
Now that it has been established what the popular industries for business students in New York are, let’s take a look at the functions they are hired for. Consulting comes in first again with 26.8% followed by Investment Banking with 13.4% and Marketing with 7.3%. Corporate Strategy and Corporate Finance take fourth and fifth place with 7.1% and 6.5%. General Management comes in sixth place with 4.9% while Business Development follows in seventh place with 4.5%. Investment Management claims the eighth position with 4.2% and Sales comes in ninth with 3.2%. Product Management rounds out the list with 3.0% while the Other category encapsulates 19.0%.
You may be wondering which employers are hiring for these MBA functions. According to the data, the top 5 employers are J.P. Morgan (3.2%), Citigroup (3.1%), Deloitte Consulting (3.0%), McKinsey & Company (2.7%), and Bank of America (2.6%).
However, when specifically looking at the top employers for the Consulting Industry, , Deloitte Consulting and McKinsey & Company have 10.2% each, and Ernst & Young has 8.0% of all the MBAs in our dataset from this industry living in New York. Trailing behind them is the Boston Consulting Group with 6.8% and Accenture with 5.3%. In contrast, Investment Banking—the next most common industry— has its top employers as Bank of America with 12.9%; Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse with 9.0% each, and JP Morgan with 7.5%. Likewise, Technology, Internet, & Ecommerce has a different set of top employers with IBM having 15.7%, Amazon and Google tying in second place with 5.2% each, Microsoft having 3.3%, and lastly Thomson Reuters having 2.6%.
The last question asked was which business schools have the most alumni working in this city. Columbia Business School and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business come in first with each set of alumni making up 16.4% of the data. New York University Stern School of Business—another New York business school—makes up 14.0%. This is followed by the Wharton School of Business (University of Pennsylvania) with 7.4%, and Harvard Business School with 5.7%.
MBAs of New York – City Guide:
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