I am conviced by data - the school data. The FT data is way to high to be realistic. No company would grant the average MBA alumni 16%-raises every single year - not to ESMT-alumni and not to any other school's alumni. That's why the data is in line with other schools as you said: It's systematically biased.

When I set up my MBA ROI model and interpolated both data points (school data and FT data) I asked myself: Why would the employer close that gap for me? Would my employer promote me just one or two years after I got hired? Or will he give me 16% extra every year without a promotion? Both seems very unrealistic.

Edit: And to provide another example, because it really is not ESMT-specific: Take INSEAD:

1y salary: 105,000 USD
3y salary: 166,000 USD

That would mean that the first employer after graduation adds a whopping 61,000 USD in two years or grants raises of 26% each year. You don't find that questionable?

I doubled my salary before even picking up my MBA diploma. The car allowance was around a 16% hike by itself. Knowing the experiences of the people I have studied with or taught at triple crown business schools, I do not find that surprising. I know you think KPMG and the FT are conspiring with tens of thousands of underpaid alumni to distort the results, so all I can do is invite people reading this to pick 20 random graduates from top MBAs and see if the claim seems credible when adding in the impact of changing jobs, bonus schemes and equity participation.

I don't believe in conspiracies at all - KPMG and FT evaluate the data that they get back which is perfetly fine. Probably even they don't know whether the 43% they get are representative or distorted.

If I understand the term and definition of the salary correctly, school and FT data exclude car allowances, bonus schemes and equity participations (Or am I wrong? That could explain the difference). All that's left is raises through changing jobs (fair point, but then many, many people must do that within their first 3 years) and regular raises which, again, I don't find plausible to that extent.

You're right, asking alumni is actually the phase I'm in right now. But: Whatever the result is, I can't be sure either to have asked a 'representative subset' :)

Salary should include car allowances and bonuses, since they are paid as taxable salary. Equity is harder to value, but it's certainly a major element of compensation. Speaking personally, my salary package, excluding equity, increased four-fold from when I started applying for MBAs, as an analyst, to when I became a senior manager at Deloitte. 16% isn't impossible if you stay in the same firm (it's a promotion) but if you change country, industry or role it's very easy.

Asking individual alumni also has a bias: I don't see how that is better than getting a huge sample like the FT's.

I see, that probably solves my issue. I used base salary provided by the schools as a reference and compared it with FT data which include bonus and other perks. To make them comparable, I'd have to subtract ~20% from whatever FT reports. That gives me the base salary that needs to be compared with school data - correct?

The INSEAD case mentioned earlier would look like this:

1y salary: 105,000 USD
3y salary: 166,000 USD / 1.2 = ~138,000 USD => 11,6% p.a. increase each year.

However, I couldn't find any further explanation of what is included in the FT salary and what isn't - do you know of any source?

You could ask them, but the concept of salary seems very straightforward to me. It's the taxable remuneration for employment.

I asked them and they answered this:

"Thank you for your interest in our MBA ranking.
Salary data do not include stock options, car allowance or other non monetary perks.

We do include guaranteed bonuses.

We normalise the salary data but do not make any corrections. We see all kind of salary levels. 43% is a very strong response rate, in particular considering that we survey the whole population and not a sample. The programmes with very large cohorts tend to have smaller response rates but we regularly see rates above 60% at school level."

This means to me that performance bonuses are not included but guaranteed bonuses are. While this makes sense to be, one should notice that there might be performance bonuses on top of what FT reports.

The point about car allowances surprises me. My car allowance *was* cash, because I did not take the company car.