I got this e-mail from my MBA program, the Duke's Fuqua School of Business. Apparently, there was a salary survey sent out that I totally ignored, but now the data was published via the e-mail I read. So I took a glance through it -- I have to see how I compare to my peers. I am hardly one of the top paid graduates from my class -- that surely goes to the investment banking crowd; but I expected to be way below my peers in salary. I have an good job, but I figured most of my class would be paid much better. I was surprised that I'm only 15% below the average salary. I find this surprising, because when I graduated, I was likely 45% below the average salary. I am actually catching up to the average! Of course, I don't know how the survey was compiled. Perhaps some people who answered the survey have dropped out of the workforce and therefore are bringing down the average unfairly. Now when comparing to my class, the survey went across all the MBA programs, which includes those who went to Duke while working full time. If I just look at the salary of those who graduated from the daytime program (note: this was a survey done of reunion year alumni so this specific data point combines various years), I'm just 2% below the average salary.
I'm not sure if I'm bragging here or not. I'm rather shocked that I've caught up with my peers. It is possible that one of my classmates will come across this and they'll just think I'm a loser for just being average -- or more honestly just below average. I guess why I'm shocked by this is the fact that I always felt that my classmates were far superior to me. While at Duke, I always felt that I was likely in the bottom 25 percentile, that is 75 people were more qualified than me while 25 were less qualified. I guess the fact that on the surface of things I'm right in the middle of my class sort of gives me a pleasant surprise. I will say this; however, even now so many years after the fact I still think that 75% of my class was way smarter than me.
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