Forbes surveyed 17,000 alumni at 100 schools on their satisfaction regarding the following three areas: their current job, their career preparedness, and their MBA education. 4,600 alumni responded. The following ten schools received the highest combined rates of satisfaction:
- Stanford GSB
- UC Berkeley Haas
- Carnegie Mellon Tepper
- Michigan State Broad
- Indiana Kelley
- Dartmouth Tuck
- Duke Fuqua
- Rice Jones
- Wisconsin School of Business
- Chicago Booth
One of the interesting points highlighted in this study is the age-old question: Does money buy happiness? The study (which also measured ROI – findings were publishing in October 2013) found that there are many graduates from top b-schools making $200,000+ salaries, but who offered only so-so marks on job satisfaction. (The article points to respondents from Penn, Dartmouth, and Chicago in regards to this disassociation.) At the same time, while job satisfaction may not be soaring, that ho-hum feeling doesn’t seem to stop alumni from ranking their school satisfaction extremely high.
The alumni who responded to this survey were already five years out of b-school, which means that they graduated in 2008, at the height of the recession. The Forbes article states that these alumni “overwhelmingly gave their schools high marks for their educations, but much lower scores for their current job satisfaction.” Though graduates from Berkeley Haas gave the highest marks for job satisfaction. Tuck and Booth ranked relatively low for job satisfaction, yet made it to the top 10 due to their high marks for educational satisfaction and preparedness in relation to other MBAs. (Stanford gave top scores for both these areas.)
