In this in-depth analysis of the Darden MBA Salary and Placements outcome for the 2025 graduating class by industry, we cover: Consulting, Technology, Finance, Healthcare, Biotech, and Pharma, Energy, and Retail industries.
- Darden MBA Consulting Salary and Placements: Close to 38% Representation
- Darden MBA Financial Services Salary and Placements: Structural Stability Anchored to the U.S. East Coast
- Darden MBA Technology Salary and Placements: Hiring Volume Recovery Without Salary Increase
- Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG): Long-Term Contraction with Targeted Pay Growth
- Retail: Gradual Volume Increase with Noticeable Salary Growth
- Healthcare: Uneven Hiring Pattern with a $140,000 Median Base Salary
- Transportation & Logistics, and Energy: Narrow but Economically Rational Outcomes
Darden MBA Consulting Salary and Placements: Close to 38% Representation
Consulting accounts for 37.3% of hires for the Darden School of Business Class of 2025, with a median base salary of $190,000. While this figure remains high in absolute terms, its significance lies in the historical trends
Consulting Hiring at Darden MBA: Faced a 9 Percentage Fall from Peak Levels
Consulting hiring at Darden peaked at 46.3% in 2023 and eased to 42.5% in 2024, before declining further to 37.3% in 2025, representing a 9.2-percentage-point contraction from peak levels.
Generalist Consultants Suffered
This decline mirrors structural changes in the consulting industry during Q3 2024–Q3 2025, when firms transitioned from strategy-heavy staffing to AI-enabled, outcome-priced delivery models. Consulting firms reduced intake of generalist profiles while preserving compensation at the top of the market.
Darden’s consulting salary plateaued at $190,000, a level seen since 2023: firms are not bidding salaries upward, but are hiring fewer candidates with higher execution expectations.
Darden MBA Financial Services Salary and Placements: Structural Stability Anchored to the U.S. East Coast
Financial Services represents 26.0% of hires, with a median base salary of $175,000, unchanged from 2022 through 2025.
Unlike consulting, Financial Services showed no volatility in hiring share: Darden placed 25.7% in 2021, 26.2% in 2023, 26.5% in 2024, and now 26.0% in 2025, a four-year difference of just 0.8 percentage points.
East Coast Financial Corridors: Steady Hiring at Darden
This stability reflects Darden’s alignment with execution-oriented finance roles. During 2024–2025, financial institutions operated under higher-for-longer interest rates, limiting speculative expansion but sustaining demand for corporate finance, investment banking execution, risk, and treasury roles.
Salary stagnation at $175,000 confirms this environment: firms maintained base pay while incentivizing with varied bonus structures.
Regionally, Darden’s proximity and alumni strength in the U.S. East Coast financial corridor support consistent finance placement even when peer schools experienced more volatility. The data suggest finance at Darden is structurally embedded rather than opportunistic.
Darden MBA Technology Salary and Placements: Hiring Volume Recovery Without Salary Increase
Technology hiring rebounded to 16.1% in 2025, up sharply from 8.8% in 2024, marking a 7.3-percentage-point increase year-over-year. This is the largest single-year industry recovery in Darden’s recent employment data. However, the median base salary of $142,800 remains below the 2023 level of $155,000, indicating that this is a volume recovery, not a compensation-led rebound.
AI-Driven Efficiency Mandates: Affected Darden MBA Technology Salary
This pattern aligns precisely with global technology trends from Q3 2024–Q3 2025. While tech companies massively increased capital expenditure on AI infrastructure, cloud, and energy systems, they simultaneously reduced MBA hiring to fewer, repriced roles.
Firms expanded hiring in product-adjacent, analytics, and implementation roles, but avoided broad salary increases due to ongoing workforce restructuring and automation-driven efficiency mandates.
Darden’s technology outcome reflects selective reintegration into technology hiring, with more roles but lower median pay than peak years, consistent with industry-wide repricing of non-technical MBA positions.
Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG): Long-Term Contraction with Targeted Pay Growth
CPG accounts for 3.8% of hires, with a median base salary of $125,000. Historically, CPG hiring at Darden has declined steadily from 4.7% in 2021 to 2.7% in 2024, before rebounding modestly in 2025.
This recovery coincides with a 18.7% increase in median CPG salaries from 2021 to 2024, suggesting firms are hiring fewer but offering a $125,000 to $135,000 salary range for MBAs. Industry-wide, CPG firms reduced brand-heavy roles and prioritized pricing strategy, revenue growth management, and supply-chain optimization, particularly under inflation and private-label pressure.
The hiring stagnation indicate that CPG at Darden is no longer a scale pathway; it is a skill-specific outlet with rising pay but limited volume.
Retail: Gradual Volume Increase with Noticeable Salary Growth
Retail hiring stands at 3.1%, with a median base salary of $135,000, continuing a four-year upward trend from 1.7% in 2021 to 3.7% in 2024. Importantly, retail salaries at Darden increased 11.5% over four years, reaching $135,000 in 2024, the highest among peer schools in that sector.
This growth reflects the transformation of retail toward e-commerce, omnichannel strategy, and luxury brand management. Darden’s retail outcomes represent the structural evolution of roles.
Healthcare: Uneven Hiring Pattern with a $140,000 Median Base Salary
Healthcare represents 3.1% of hires, with a median base salary of $140,000. After falling from 6.1% in 2021 to 3.4% in 2022, healthcare rebounded to 5.1% in 2024, before stabilising near current levels.
Salary growth of 12.2% from 2021 to 2024 indicates renewed employer willingness to pay for operations, market access, and healthcare strategy roles. The 2025 data suggests healthcare has reached equilibrium, with limited scope for further expansion, as the funding has clearly moved away from Digital Healthcare technologies to AI-Driven Healthcare technologies.
Manufacturing, Transportation & Logistics, and Energy: Narrow but Economically Rational Outcomes
Manufacturing (2.7%, $132,500), Transportation & Logistics (2.4%, $131,750), and Energy (2.4%, $135,000) remain small but analytically meaningful.
Manufacturing – A Weakening Industry at Darden
Manufacturing hiring has declined steadily since 2021, with no salary growth over four years, indicating weak employer competition.
Operations/Logistics – A Steady Growing Industry
In contrast, Operations/Logistics salaries rose 29.3% from 2021 to 2024, explaining continued hiring despite low volume
Industry | Percent of Hires | Median Base Salary |
| Consulting | 37.3% | $190,000 |
| Financial Services | 26% | $175,000 |
| Technology | 16.1% | $142,800 |
| Consumer Packaged Goods | 3.8% | $125,000 |
| Retail | 3.1% | $135,000 |
| Healthcare | 3.1% | $140,000 |
| Manufacturing | 2.7% | $132,500 |
| Transportation and Logistics | 2.4% | $131,750 |
| Energy | 2.4% | $135,000 |
Reference
