Among non-U.S. respondents to the survey who were in the job market, 48 percent said they had at least one job offer before graduation, up from 32 percent four years ago.
"The evidence is clear that the MBA continues in its appeal to employers," said Dave Wilson, president and chief executive officer of GMAC, an international association of business schools and sponsor of the Graduate Management Admission Test(R) (GMAT(R)). "For the fifth year in a row, a growing number of MBA graduates have at least one job offer in hand before graduation."
Many respondents in 2007 had more than one job offer to consider, reflecting steadily rising employer demand for people with a graduate management education. The survey found that the average respondent had received 2.5 job offers at the time of the survey, regardless of whether he or she went to school full-time or pursued their degree while working.
Business school graduates are also growing more confident about their value to employers. Across the board, respondents in 2007 said they anticipated a post-graduation salary bump that is larger than their counterparts in previous years expected. Full-time MBA students anticipated the largest average percentage increase in compensation (54 percent), followed by part-time students, who expected a 43 percent jump in pay, on average. Executive MBA students said they anticipated their paychecks to rise by an average of 33 percent.
In addition, a substantial majority of survey participants said they considered their graduate business education to be an outstanding or excellent value. Students most frequently cited the quality of the curriculum, caliber of the faculty and way their programs were run as factors in determining their level of satisfaction.
The 2007 GMAC Global MBA Graduate Survey includes responses from 5,641 graduating MBA students representing 158 business schools around the world. About 65 percent of the respondents were actively seeking employment at the time the survey was conducted.
