Salary response rate
Also called salary information rate · percent reporting salary · usable salary information
Full-time: number of job-accepting graduates with reliable salary information ÷ total job-accepting graduates.
Salary response rate is the share of graduates who accepted jobs for whom the school has usable pay. CSEA full-time MBA Edition VII sets an 80% target among those who accepted by three months. Part-time Standards II set 70% among employed graduates. The footnote is required even when the school misses.
How is it calculated?
Full-time: number of job-accepting graduates with reliable salary information ÷ total job-accepting graduates.
That is acceptors, not seekers and not the class. A 90% placement rate with a 60% salary rate means the published median describes a volunteer subset of the people who took jobs.
Table 4.A’s own percent-reporting-base line is the same fraction, split by work authorization. The signing-bonus percent uses a different base (people who provided base salary, per the table footnote). Do not quote one as the other.
Part-time: number of employed graduates with usable salary ÷ employed graduates, target 70%. The part-time book is a class profile. Do not paste an 80% full-time target onto it.
Class-level knowledge is a separate footnote: full-time wants reliable employment status on 85% of graduates; part-time wants 70%. Missing status and missing salary are different failures.
What a low rate does to the median
| Response | Risk |
|---|---|
| 90%+ | Median is close to the acceptor population |
| 80% (the floor) | Usable, still check visa split |
| 50–70% | High-comp reporters often over-index |
| Under 50% | Treat the median as a sample, not a class fact |
Example: 200 seekers, 180 accepted (90% placement), 108 reported base (60%). Median among the 108 is $175k. If the silent 72 cluster in corporate and nonprofit, the real acceptor median is lower. If they cluster in PE and refuse to share, the real median is higher. Without the footnote you cannot tell.
Yale SOM 2025 footnoted 91.8% of accepted offers with salary — above the 80% floor. A smaller program that prints $145k with no footnote may be describing 20 of 80 acceptors.
Employer-provided salaries count if they are reliable. Graduate, parent, and employer sources are all allowed; conjecture is not.
Common errors
Dividing salary reporters by the whole class. Using the 85% status target as if it were the salary target. Applying 80% to a part-time profile. Comparing two schools’ medians when one footnoted 92% and the other 55%. Treating bonus response as salary response.
FAQ
What is the full-time target again — 80% or 85%?
Both, of different things. 85% is reliable employment information on all graduates (Table 1.A). 80% is usable salary among those who accepted by three months (Table 4.A). Missing either footnote is a compliance miss.
Does a school below 80% still publish a median?
Yes, with the footnote. The target is a quality line, not a gag rule. A 62% salary rate with a published median is legal and weaker. Read the footnote before quoting the dollar figure in a ranking table.
Can employer data rescue the rate?
Yes. Reliable salary from an employer, a parent, or the graduate all count. Social-media salary guesses do not, unless the office verified them. Edition VII’s documentation rules still apply.
Why is the part-time target 70%?
Working-professional classes are harder to survey, and the part-time document is a profile rather than a placement contest. The 2025 revisions also moved specialty master’s knowledge to 70%. Full-time MBA stayed at 85%/80%.
Related terms
Sources
- CSEA Standards for Reporting Full-time MBA Employment Statistics, Edition VII 80% of job-accepting graduates; footnote required; formula is reporters / acceptors
- CSEA Part-time MBA and Specialty Masters Graduating Class Profile, Standards II 70% salary target for employed part-time graduates; different denominator
