Career in MBA

Finance she could get 110k easily

What did she do before the baby? Without previous experience mba from non top school is not worth much.

You should expect $0-$1,000,000/year. How can anybody give you an accurate answer without work history, skillset, industry knowledge, company targets, or educational background?

Many mba i know end up close to what they are making before the mba. Some doors may open up more but no gaurantee. Unless you're at top mba programs making connections, better to just work.

No name MBAs with little exp can expect anywhere between 60-90k base in most places

From your question it seems like she had neither finance, nor a product background earlier. To be honest, it's very unlikely to break into PM roles without prior experience. If she has been a hands on developer, that definitely could help, but again there's no guarantee. Finance and PM post your MBA are the generally the highest paid in the Bay Area, with some exceptions perhaps. Among brand name companies that offer big bucks to fresh grads, you can safely assume that about 90% of the jobs go to grads in the top 20 MBA programs. Outside of that, you must have a very impressive profile, great networking skills, and fantabulous interviewing skills to get invited and crack into PM roles at these brand name companies. That leaves you with non-brand companies if you can't fit into the above criteria. In that case, a fair expectation could be in the range of 110-120K, and some well funded startups maybe able to offer a little more. And by the way, startups are harder to crack. With finance, you have roles such as finance manager, business manager, business analyst. You could probably also look at VC/PE firms for entry level positions in finance, but once again, roles in VC/PE are way harder to crack compared to the tech industry finance roles. VC/PE are also very selective and are a tight knit community of amazing folks. You'll need a ton of networking and the ability to do finance with one hand tied to your back. The standard industry roles will be relatively easy to crack into and will fetch the same amount 100-120K. Add another 10-20% if you manage a role in VC/PE. Companies that offer under 100K for an MBA position aren't the ones you'll want to join. Either they are second rate or third rate, or could be non-funded startups. I would still see reason in joining an early stage non-funded startup in whose team and vision you believe, but I'd definitely stay away from unstable second rate companies after investing $100k+ in an MBA. My suggestion is that focus on roles in finance though they may start you off a tad bit lower. To crack into PM roles, or even get that first interview, you need significant product and/or dev experience. For finance, the industry will value your mba degree and won't measure you against your pre-MBA background very heavily. If you stay focused for 2yrs on landing a job in a finance position, it'll happen because you'll put all your 2yrs into skill building.

Can’t speak for the Bay Area but here on the east coast, MBA’s have become so over saturated that if it’s not from a top school, you have to have quite a bit of experience to even get a call back for non-entry level roles. From my own personal experience, the MBA did open the door for me to get a internship at a tech company but other than that, it’s mostly just been something quickly mentioned because asking about work experience. It seems that MBAs are only truly beneficial after about a decade of work experience. Again this is only speaking from a no-name school and on the east coast. I would suggest she tries finding work or an internship while in school because without any experience, she’ll be looking at only entry level positions.

Sorry to revive this old thread. How was CSU East Bay MBA experience? How do employers look at it? My partner has an option to enroll either csueb or SCU.