The jobs that can give Stanford MBAs a shot at up to $522K a year

Linda A. Cicero/Stanford News Service

Stanford MBA grads in the class of 2013 are making six figures in a variety of professional fields, from private equity to e-commerce.

Lauren Hepler: Economic Development Reporter- Silicon Valley Business Journal; Email | Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+

Sure, Stanford's business school has a reputation for churning out talent in lucrative fields like private equity and venture capital.
But a new analysis shows just how much money recent MBA grads of Stanford's Graduate School of Business really make. The 2013 grad who reported the highest compensation appears to be making around $522,000 annually at "a private equity job in the Northeast," according to the academic site Poets & Quants.
The analysis, which is based on data provided by recent grads for the university's annual employment report, concludes that private equity, hedge funds, venture capital and cleantech and/or energy are the top-paying fields for MBAs in the Stanford GSB class of 2013. Stanford's reputation as a feeder school for elite fields such as finance and the Silicon Valley tech world is well established (read more in the 2012 New Yorker article entitled "Get Rich U.")
When it comes to the top-paid 2013 grad who is now making north of half a million dollars, Poets & Quants notes that the student reported a guaranteed annual bonus of $337,500 (which excludes other potential incomes streams like tuition reimbursement, profit sharing agreements or stock options). To reach the $522,000 figure, the analysis assumed that the student is supplementing the six-figure bonus with the median industry base pay of $150,000, on top of the median $35,000 private equity signing bonus.
Below is a breakdown of the specific industries where newly-minted Stanford MBAs are now making bank. It's also worth noting that a record number of 2013 grads — about 18 percent of them — eschewed these fields, instead jumping straight into entrepreneurship.