The M7 By The Numbers 2026: MBA Hiring Rebounds, Pay Holds Strong

Kristy Bleizeffer

Tue, August 11, 2026 at 10:07 PM GMT+3 8 min read

A year ago, the M7 employment numbers told a pretty grim story.

Job offers fell at six of the seven elite business schools in 2024. At Harvard Business School, nearly a quarter of job-seeking MBAs were still without offers three months after graduation. Chicago Booth, Kellogg, Stanford, and MIT Sloan all posted significant declines as well. Only Columbia Business School managed to buck the trend.

For the Class of 2025, the shaky job market seemed to stabilize.

Across the M7, the average share of job seekers with offers three months after graduation rose to 90.1% from 88.1%. The average acceptance rate climbed even more, from 82.8% to 86.2%. Five of the seven schools improved on both measures.

Salaries, meanwhile, were up or steady across the board. For the Class of 2025, every M7 school either maintained or increased its median base salary. The average across the seven rose 2.4% to more than $179,000.

(Editor's note: This is the second part of a two-part story. See more data on the M7 here.)

HIRING REBOUNDS AT 5 OF 7 SCHOOLS

At Columbia, 92% of job seekers had offers within three months and 90.2% had accepted, the strongest overall placement showing in the group. MIT Sloan staged perhaps the biggest comeback, with its offer rate jumping nearly 6 percentage points to 91% and its acceptance rate climbing nearly 10 points to 87.1%.

Harvard improved to 90% offers and 84% acceptances, up from 85% and 77%, respectively. Booth and Stanford also posted better three-month results.

Still, this is not a return to the nearly automatic job placement of the MBA boom years.

Wharton's offer rate slipped from 93.1% to 90.5%, while acceptances fell from 88.2% to 87%. Kellogg also lost ground, with offers declining from 90% to 88% and acceptances from 87% to 86%. Just three years ago, Kellogg reported 99% offers and 97% acceptances within three months.

PAY JUMPS AT EVERY M7 SCHOOL

For the Class of 2025, every M7 school either maintained or increased its median base salary.

Stanford and Wharton topped the group at $185,000. Harvard was right behind at $184,500, up $9,500 in a single year. Columbia and Booth held at $175,000, while Kellogg and MIT Sloan both climbed to $175,000 after trailing the pack in 2024. The result is a tight salary band for the world's most prominent U.S. MBA programs: Just $10,000 separates the highest and lowest M7 median base salaries.

Signing bonuses are even more standardized. All seven schools reported a $30,000 median in 2025.

Total compensation is more complicated. Harvard's median total package jumped to $232,800 from $221,800. Columbia climbed to $200,630 from $198,996, while Kellogg returned to its record $200,500. Booth, Stanford, and Sloan, meanwhile, all lost ground.

At Stanford, softer incentive pay offset higher average base salaries. Expected performance bonuses fell nearly 11%, helping push total compensation lower for a second straight year. Sloan saw a similar dynamic in that core pay strengthened while other compensation fell.

NEXT PAGE: The M7s big three industries – consulting, tech, and finance

Northwestern University's Kellogg School

CONSULTING RISES AT 6 OF 7 SCHOOLS

Last year, consulting was one of the clearest casualties of the MBA slowdown. Its share of graduates fell at every M7 school in 2024 as firms cut recruiting, delayed starts, and worked through oversized hiring classes from the boom years.

In 2025, that trend almost completely reversed with consulting increasing its share at six of the seven M7 schools.

Kellogg remained the consulting king, with the sector taking 38% of accepted offers, up from 34.8%. Booth followed at 36.7%, up from 33.8%. Columbia rose to 33.2% from 30.6%, Wharton to 28.2% from 25.1%, and Harvard to 21% from 18%.

MIT Sloan was essentially flat but still moved slightly higher, to 32.3% from 32.1%. Only Stanford moved decisively in the opposite direction, with consulting falling to 11% from 14% and from 15% two years ago.

The employer data show just how much consulting recruiting improved at some schools.

At Columbia, Boston Consulting Group hired 62 MBAs in 2025, more than double its 29 hires the year before. Bain jumped from 12 to 33, while McKinsey increased from 50 to 62.

At Booth, BCG hired 52, McKinsey 35, and Bain 30. At Sloan, BCG led with 26, followed by McKinsey with 20 and Bain with 12.

That doesn't mean consulting has returned to its old highs everywhere. Kellogg's 38%, for example, remains below the 42% it sent into the industry in 2023; Columbia's 33.2% remains below 36.3%.

TECH IS BACK (SORT OF)

For the Class of 2024, tech hires remained weak compared to the relative highs of the Classes of 2019 and 2020. Major tech companies like Google and Amazon cut back on their MBA hires, and tech fells as a percentage of full-time employment for 2024 grads at four of the M7s.

While tech placement increased at five of the seven M7 schools for those who graduated in 2025, the rebound was anything but uniform.

At Stanford, 35% percent of graduates went into technology, up from 22% the year before, a 13-percentage-point surge. That was enough to push tech past finance, which fell to 33%, and make technology Stanford's largest employment sector.

MIT Sloan also saw a meaningful recovery, with tech rising to 23.3% from 19%. Harvard jumped six percentage points to 22%, overtaking consulting as its second-most-popular industry behind finance.

Wharton continued a slower recovery, rising to 15.3% from 14.2% and 13.5% in 2023. Columbia barely budged, increasing to 10.2% from 10%. At Kellogg and Booth, however, tech continued to lose ground. Kellogg fell to 19% from 20.4%, while Booth slipped to 14.1% from 14.8%.

So, is tech back?

At Stanford, unquestionably. It's moving in the right direction at schools like Sloan, Harvard, and even Wharton (though at a more steady clip.) But at Columbia, Booth, and Kellogg, the numbers offer far less evidence of a broad hiring resurgence.

Columbia's 10.2% remains roughly half the 19.8% of its Class of 2020 that entered tech. Kellogg remains well below the 26% it recorded in 2021. Sloan's 23.3% recovery still doesn't bring it back to its pre-pandemic 30.7% share in 2019.

FINANCE LOSES GROUND AT MOST OF THE M7

While finance remains one of the defining M7 industries, it lost share at five of the seven schools as a share of Class of 2025 placements. Harvard saw the largest decline, falling to 33% from 39%. Stanford dropped four points to 33%, while MIT Sloan fell even more sharply, to 20.6% from 25.3%.

Booth slipped to 31.6% from 32.9%, and Columbia edged down to 35.4% from 35.9%. Only Wharton and Kellogg moved higher compared to 2024.

Wharton strengthened its position as the M7's most finance-heavy school, with the industry taking 38.2% of placements, up from 36.3% in 2024 and even slightly ahead of its 37.3% share in 2023.

The declines at Stanford and Harvard are particularly telling because they coincided with large gains in technology. At Stanford, tech surged 13 points as finance fell four. At Harvard, tech gained six points while finance lost six. Sloan followed a similar pattern, with tech gaining 4.3 points as finance dropped 4.7.

That suggests at least some of the 2025 industry movement wasn't simply about more jobs becoming available. It was also about where M7 graduates chose to go as technology reopened opportunities that had been far scarcer a year earlier.

While finance may have ceded some share, its most selective placements remain among the most lucrative destinations in the M7.

At Wharton, private equity accounted for 13.4% of placements with a $200,000 median base salary. At Harvard, private equity paid a median base salary of $188,000 plus a median $150,000 performance bonus among recipients. Stanford's investment management and hedge fund graduates reported some of the highest base salaries in its class.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP MOVES IN OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS

The employment reports also show how difficult it is to tell one entrepreneurship story across the M7. Compared to other popular industries, entrepreneurship may not be fully comparable across schools, because schools can differ in whether they count graduates starting businesses, continuing existing ventures, joining family businesses, pursuing acquisition entrepreneurship, or reporting themselves as not seeking employment.

At Harvard, 17% of its Class of 2025 started businesses, up from 12% a year earlier and 13% in 2023. That translated to 155 new founders, while another 17% of HBS graduates joined startups within three months of graduation.

Kellogg nearly doubled its entrepreneurship share, to 4.6% from 2.4%, while MIT Sloan increased to 11.1% from 10%. Booth was essentially flat at 4%, up from 3.9%.

Stanford moved sharply in the other direction. Sixteen percent of its graduates pursued entrepreneurship in 2025, still one of the highest rates in the M7 but well below 23% in 2024 and 25% in 2023.

The broader point is that the traditional employment rate captures only part of what happens after an M7 MBA. At Harvard and Stanford in particular, large numbers of graduates are choosing to create companies rather than enter the conventional recruiting pipeline.

SEE P&Q'S COVERAGE OF THE M7 2025 EMPLOYMENT REPORTS:

DON'T MISS: The M7 By The Numbers 2026: What It Takes To Get Admitted To H-S-W Plus

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