It's the question everyone is secretly asking: how much will I make as a consultant with an MBA? And what are the salary differences by consulting firm? There are a lot of factors to consider when deciding if consulting is the right career choice. If you're honest, the Consultant Salary is probably one of your biggest determining factors in deciding between consulting and other industries, as well as between different consulting firms. And after investing in an MBA, we can't blame you. Jenny Rae, ex-Bain consultant, exposes why firms offer differing amounts and how much you can expect to make as a consultant with an MBA.
MBA Salaries: How Much Do Consultants With An MBA Make?
One of the main reasons that people go get an MBA, is they want to have somebody show them the money! And we're here today to talk about the MBA salary for consultants. Specifically, if you get an MBA and you get an offer, how much can you expect to make?
Methodology
First of all, I want to talk a little bit about our methodology for this. We don't source our data from Glassdoor. We have the only primary sourced research, that focuses on getting actual salary data from people that are in the field. And we get hundreds, sometimes even topping a thousand responses, from folks that are going into multiple firms after graduation.
We can verify their base, their bonus, their "relo" (relocation), their 401k match, everything that is involved with your compensation after graduation at the MBA level. And this is really exciting because there's so much that goes into deciding whether you want to pursue a job in consulting, there's a lot of case interview preparation, there's resumes and cover letters that need to be absolutely perfect and pristine. And so sometimes when people are thinking about, should I invest in this or not, it's really helpful to know, from the source, how much firms are paying and why.
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Why Consulting Firms Change What They Pay
The second thing that's helpful to understand, is why consulting firms change what they pay, and when they make those changes. Consulting firms usually do compensation reviews, right before the offer process. So for example, for MBAs during the internship, they will make a comp review, between when they give out the interviews and when they are about to prep for the interview process- usually in December or January. But before they give out offers. And if they're going to escalate what they're going to offer, they'll usually do that review and then make that public in the offer process.
For full-time, because that happens at the beginning of the year, usually they make that comp review just before the end of the MBA interns, that are in office. Because when they hand out offers to return, they're gonna want to make them on the next year's salary.
So for MBA interns, it's December & January when they make their changes. And for full-time MBAs, it's in the summer, usually in July they make their changes for the upcoming year. So in 2023, they would assess for 2024, and in 2024 they will assess for 2025.
Consultant Salary Report
MBA consulting salaries are a big hot topic, and we are here to pull back the curtain on what you actually make. You can read about all of this on a report online. But just at a high-level, it's good to throw out some numbers, right? MBAs at MBB firms, which are the targets for many folks that go into consulting, are around a $190,000 base salary.
Pressure From Internal Strategy Groups & Tech
And that has jumped recently because firms are facing increased pressure from internal strategy groups, which offer a similar programmatic benefit, the ability to work on different projects with X consulting staff, but the ability to stay home. And with tech, which offers a fast-paced escalation in pay, some equity compensation, the ability to have free lunch on campus, and also the ability to stay home.
So the top consulting firms provide MBA consultants a $190K base salary and about $160K at Big 4 firms and similar for boutiques.
So overall if you are thinking about getting your MBA and you want to know what will be my MBA salary for a consulting. We've laid it out here. We lay it out by firm, by office, in even more detail in our Consultant Salary Report.