Why Stanford MBAs Earn the Most

Stanford University’s business school has produced at least four self-made billionaires and 244 active chief executive officers, but Ross Pedersen, class of 2016, wakes up around 2 a.m. up to four days a week to clean toilets.

Until early February, the 25-year-old was a vice president at Dallas-based hedge fund Verdad Advisers, where he says he helped pick securities to purchase and companies worthy of investment. He started the job in his last months at Stanford, part-time, then joined full-time about a week after graduation. Pedersen had around $55,000 of student loans to repay, and Verdad offered him an annual six-figure compensation package. But within a few months of starting, a desire to do public service started “eating away at me,” Pedersen says. Soon after, with his boss’s blessing, he took a yearlong leave to join the U.S. Army and prepare to become a national guardsman.