This sort of correlates to a recent post you responded to.

I noticed, when a colleague was going through the process last year, that salary progression is listed next to job history on the applications. I am curious how much of a benefit it is to show strong salary progression? Obviously it can’t hurt, but I wanted to know more of how much of a benefit it is.

I started my job about 1.5 years ago and have been promoted twice and my base salary has gone up over 40% and total compensation (base/bonus) has increased over 60%. I’m 24 now and will be making ~125k this year. Do schools even care about that? (note it isn’t the money I’m as concerned with, I would be looking to make the change from banking to strategy consulting, with the goal of eventually joining a strategy/corp development group).

Also, do admissions folks recognize a difference in me working 70-80 hours a week, compared to an individual working 35-45 a week, or am I just compared to the “pool” of other finance people?

They take it all into account collectively - each datapoint on it's own isn't going to make or break, but collectively they help the adcom assess your overall career progression. However, there isn't some black-and-white rank order or specific evaluative criteria that applies in the same way across all applicants -- the datapoints such as salary history, hours worked, etc. will simply be info that the adcom can use in his/her subjective assessment.

So if you double your salary over a few years, of course it will be a good thing, but the degree to which an adcom cares or not really depends on the individual adcom reading your application - most of the time though on it's own it'll be noted but they still care most about your responsibilities and achievements more than your pay. Same goes for hours worked - the hours worked per week matters more for applicants in non-traditional industries where the adcom is less familiar with. For banking (80-100 hours), consulting (65-80 hours) and most engineering jobs (50 - 70 hours), they have a pretty good idea of how much you work per week so this datapoint isn't looked at closely.

Alex Chu
alex@mbaapply.com
www.mbaapply.com
http://mbaapply.blogspot.com

Is there a certain point where the bschool will ask, why do you want to take a job that pays less money? And should you address it in your essays?
For instance, I currently make $x, but I know that avg starting salaries for marketing jobs are much less then $x.

It's not the law of nature that someone should automatically take a job with a higher salary.
To switch careers, most people are prepared to take a temporary paycut to make that happen.

Alex Chu
alex@mbaapply.com
www.mbaapply.com
http://mbaapply.blogspot.com