The 10 best business schools if you want to work on Wall Street

wall street skyline

Do you have visions of orchestrating mega-mergers, minting millions on bold stock bets, or managing billions of dollars in assets? Or, perhaps more realistically, playing with spreadsheets for hours on end? Wall Street might be calling your name.

A job in finance can set you up for a lucrative career. And an MBA from a high-powered business school can help you leap a few rungs on the ladder and command a six-figure salary right off the bat. In fact, at the top-10 business schools for finance, the average graduate earns over $140,000 in their first year.

That's according to the latest list of top business schools by U.S. News & World Report, which ranked 131 MBA programs based on criteria that includes job placement, starting salary, selectivity, and assessments by peers and recruiters. The schools were given a numerical score, with 100 representing the best possible result. Read a full breakdown of the methodology here.

In addition to its overall ranking, U.S. News ranked the best schools for various business professions, from accounting to supply chain logistics. And, of course, finance. For these career-specific rankings, U.S. News surveyed the deans and MBA program directors at various schools, who were asked to nominate up to 10 programs that excelled at the given career specializations.

Read on to check out the 10 top business schools for a career on Wall Street.

Note: Tuition figures reflect annual costs for out-of-state students.

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10. University of California at Los Angeles — Anderson School of Management

Location: Los Angeles, California

Average starting salary: $140,457

Annual tuition and fees: $59,290

Overall score: 84

UCLA's Anderson School of Management prides itself on "looking to the future to discover and chart what will be." To that end, the school recently established an academic marketing partnership with Google to provide students with insight into Google's pioneering approach to marketing measurement and storytelling. Notable alumni include YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and a number of Google executives.

9. University of Michigan — Ross School of Business

Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan

Average starting salary: $145,926

Annual tuition and fees: $64,678

Overall score: 89

The Ross School of Business strives to provide each student with opportunities to advance their career, and it facilitates a team of over 50 peer coaches to help them along the way. Hundreds of well-known companies visit the school to interview MBA candidates, and top recruiters for the class of 2016 included Amazon, Deloitte, Google, McKinsey & Co., and Microsoft.

8. Harvard University — Harvard Business School

Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Average starting salary: $153,830

Annual tuition and fees: $75,353

Overall score: 100

The world's oldest — and most expensive — MBA program, Harvard Business School is also often considered the best for overall excellence. For a career in finance though, it currently lags behind a handful of other top-notch schools.

The high average-starting salary its graduates command, the school's reputation with employers, and the HBS network of more than 46,000 living alumni make it one of the most coveted business schools for students. HBS's cadre of successful alumni — littered with politicians, CEOs, and billionaires — is unrivaled: Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former President George W. Bush, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman, and HP Chairman Meg Whitman all graduated from the institution.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider