INSEAD’s MBA Value Proposition In 10 Charts
. INSEAD’s value proposition can be told in just ten simple charts
Of all the world’s very best business schools, INSEAD offers a truly unique value proposition. In just ten frenetically intense months, the school offers young professionals a transformative experience for €89,000 ($107,000) in tuition. MBA students can choose to start their educational journey in Fontainebleau, France, or Singapore. They can enter the program in either January or September. And they can study among one of the most culturally and geographically diverse MBA cohorts assembled anywhere. American has long been known as a melting pot. INSEAD is truly a global melting pot of an institution.
And when students graduate from INSEAD, in what must seem like the blink of an eye, three out of every four MBAs do a career switch of some kind. Some students change industries or countries. Others change their functions, say from finance to consulting or consulting to tech. In a typical INSEAD graduating class, one in four manage the miraculous triple jump with their newly minted degrees, switching function, industry and country, all in one large leap.
Just a few years ago, INSEAD boasted that its MBA had the highest return on investment of any program in the world, with a five-year gain almost twice as much as any rival program and a payback period of just over two years. That’s probably true if you count foregone earnings which at INSEAD is only ten months rather than nearly two years in a conventional two-year MBA program.
The INSEAD story can be captured in 10 charts that illuminate those transformations, from the kinds of jobs graduates get from the more than 4,000 campus interviews that typically occur in a year to how much they are paid by industry sector, function and country.
Many may not realize that INSEAD graduates more MBAs in any given year than any other prestige business school. That has been the case for quite a few years. Last year, the school handed out MBA degrees to 1,017 graduates, nearly 100 more than Harvard Business School and over 600 more than Stanford's Graduate School of Business. It's a long period of growth since INSEAD welcomed its first intake of MBAs in 1959, becoming the first business school to offer a one-year MBA. The school took a big step forward toward its current size when in 1983 it began its dual intake, matriculating students in January and September. Like any large business school, INSEAD makes its size small by dividing each class into sections of approximately 70–80 students who take the program’s core courses together. These sections are then divided into study groups of five to six students who work together to solve problems and complete assignments.
Few schools in the world have as diverse a student population as INSEAD. The Class of 2020 was composed of 85 different nationalities. The two largest sources of INSEAD students are now India and China, accounting for 15.1% and 10.4% of the Class of 2020, respectively. Even so, about half of the entire class is sourced from five countries: Besides India and China, they include the U.S., Brazil, and Spain. No less compelling is the percentage of students who use their degrees to land jobs abroad instead of returning to their home countries. Some 84% of the students from India, for example, successfully gain employment outside their home country upon graduation.
Most young professionals go into MBA programs expecting to use the degree to do a career switch. Conventional wisdom would tell you that a two-year program, which affords a lengthy summer internship, is the way way to make that transition. But INSEAD proves conventional wisdom wrong. Among 2020 MBA graduates, three of every four made at least one big change in their careers, switching industries, functions or countries. Even more impressive, one in four MBA students did the so-called 'triple jump," changing out their pre-MBA industry, function and country, all simultaneously.
INSEAD was once again the top consulting school by percentage of class in 2019, with more than half its MBA graduates going into the industry. File photo
When you compare INSEAD MBA starting pay with many other leading business schools, you'll typically find that the numbers are considerably lower. Consider the median base salary last year of just $103,800. That compares with $150,000 at Harvard Business School and Wharton and $156,000 at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. How to explain that wide disparity? A much higher percentage of INSEAD grads take jobs in countries where the pay is significantly lower than in the U.S., even for the same jobs with global companies. Plus, exchange rates that convert local currencies into dollars can also play havoc with the reported numbers by INSEAD. That's why context is extremely important here. You can't really compare apples with oranges and that is what you would be doing if you put INSEAD's starting pay numbers along side any of the top U.S. MBA programs.
INSEAD puts so many MBAs into consulting that this industry is the number one career choice for the school's graduates. Part of the reason is simple: Many students here are sponsored by the big consulting firms which like the idea of losing their employees for merely ten months, rather than two years. In 2020, for instance, McKinsey, Bain and BCG, the so-called MBB, hired 265 graduates straight out of the MBA program at INSEAD. But 41% of them, 109 grads in all, had been employed by the MBB before going to campus and went straight back to MBB once they graduated. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that INSEAD is the undisputed global leader in new post-MBA placements into MBB. No other MBA program has a larger network of alumni in the management consulting industry, and no other MBA program sends a larger percentage of its student body into the consulting industry. The other reason so many INSEAD MBAs go into consulting is for the pay. No other industry pays more overall to INSEAD MBAs than the consulting biz.
Just because consulting is the best paying career route out of INSEAD doesn't mean that the highest paid graduates in any given year all end up in that sector. In fact, the highest base salary for a 2020 INSEAD MBA went to a graduate who took a job in sales and marketing in media, entertainment and advertising. That is an incredibly novel high-paying job. At most U.S. business schools, the highest paid MBAs end up in private equity, hedge funds and investment management, or venture capital. At INSEAD in 2020, another grad went into consulting in the United Arab Emirates with a starting base of $190,000. Yet another grad took a job in IT/telecom in Korea for a base salary of $172,000.
We've made the point before and we'll make it again--with a good bit of evidence behind our earlier statement. If you graduate at INSEAD, where you go to work will play a big role in how much money you'll make. Just look at the wide variances in pay for students who took jobs in consulting. In Brazil, starting base salaries for INSEAD MBAs who went to work in consulting firms were a mere $69,000 a year. That's nearly $100,000 less than those who got consulting jobs in the U.S. where the median base salary was a hefty $165,000.
The year of COVID at INSEAD
By now, you know that consulting is big at INSEAD. So here's a look at the annual hires from INSEAD of the consulting firms that routinely take the most MBA graduates into their workforces. No one beats McKinsey, which hired 124 INSEAD MBAs out of the Class of 2020, with 55 of those hires returning to their former employer. The Boston Consulting Group is a distant second with 80 ires, including 28 former employees, while Bain & Co. is third, with 61 INSEAD hires, 26 of whom returned to Bain after graduation.
And how about the booming tech industry? Amazon, which recruits roughly 1,000 new MBAs every year, is at the top. Amazon hiring of INSEAD MBAs peaked in 2017 when the e-commerce behemoth brought aboard 56 graduates. Last year, Amazon hired 37 INSEAD MBAs to maintain its number one position in tech hires. Microsoft, Apple and Google also are consistently active at INSEAD but in far smaller numbers. Last year, for example, Microsoft employed just 7 INSEAD MBAs, well off its peak hiring at the school in 2016.
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So what do INSEAD MBAs actually do when they graduate from the school? A very high percentage of them are recruited into leadership development programs by a wide range of companies from Adidas and Johnson & Johnson to Siemens and Kraft/Heinz. A surprising percentage--nearly 18%--take on jobs in sales and marketing. Some 17% go into business development or corporate planning positions, and about 10% land roles in project management.
DON'T MISS: MEET THE INSEAD MBA CLASS OF 2021 or MEET INSEAD'S MBA CLASS OF 2020
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