Grad School and Your Earning Potential

The Wall Street Journal’s education section recently published an article entitled “For Newly Minted M.B.A.s, a Smaller Paycheck Awaits”, about the job market for M.B.A. While the M.B.A remains an extremely popular option for graduate study (the number of degrees awarded grew by 74% from 2000-2001 to 2010-2011), the financial benefits once associated with it are not what they once were. According to the article, “recruiters’ expected median salary for newly hired M.B.A.s was essentially flat between 2008 and 2011, not adjusting for inflation, according to a survey by the Graduate Management Admission Council.”

At this point, you’re probably wondering, “Yes, but this is the GRE blog, not the b-school blog – why the heck do I care??” Well, you should take note for two reasons:

1) Many of you probably are taking the GRE to go to business school, since 69% of M.B.A. programs now accept a GRE score in lieu of a GMAT score.

2) Whatever type of graduate program you’re applying to, don’t necessarily assume that it will double your paycheck the day you graduate. That may not even be a concern for you – after all, there are a number of reasons to get a master’s or PhD that have absolutely nothing to do with salary. But do the research on the average salary that your desired degree confers, and on any debt that you’ll accumulate to attain it, so that you have a realistic idea of what your financial situation will be when you graduate.

There are a number of resources that you can visit to learn more about what you can expect from a given graduate degree: Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce recently published a study on average salaries and unemployment rates by different bachelor’s and master’s degrees (don’t let my words of warning above scare you away from reading it – the data shows that the vast majority of master’s programs do result in a nice pay raise!), and you can start researching financial aid at Kaplan’s Grad School Financial Aid Hub. Happy hunting, and use the comments to let us know if you’d like any additional resources!