An MBA isn't as important as you might think for building a career on Wall Street

You might think that holding a Masters of Business Administration, or MBA, is essential to building a career on Wall Street.

You would be wrong.

It turns out that MBA degrees are very common at the upper levels within investment banks - but they don't dominate.

And at the entry level, the most common degree is in fact a Bachelor of Science.

That is, of course, because people typically go to business school after completing an analyst program or attaining an associate-level position.

To better understand which degrees are most popular on Wall Street, we spoke to Emolument, a salary benchmarking website that collects self-reported pay data.

They gathered data on 840 finance professionals in New York at the analyst, associate, vice president, and director level.

Here is what they found.