Each year, business schools vie for the top spot on “best MBA program” rankings. Their employment rates, application statistics, curriculum content and faculty members can all be taken into account, then the numbers are run and the best business schools are announced.
Several sites release annual MBA program rankings. As 2024 comes to a close, we’re rounding up the best programs of the year. In this article, we’ll review the most popular rankings: U.S. News & World Report, the Financial Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and LinkedIn.
When examining these lists of best business schools, it’s important to note that rankings aren’t everything. The culture, electives, faculty or location of a lower-ranked school may better fit your MBA goals than that of a higher-ranked school. Be sure to look further into what makes each business school “special,” and why each of them stand out—so that you can consider more comprehensively which school might work best for you.
U.S. News & World Report
The annual U.S. News & World Report MBA ranking is one of the most comprehensive out there. It highlights hundreds of business schools in the United States, organizing programs according to a weighted average based on factors that include career placement, student excellence and expert evaluation. U.S. News also ranks online and part time MBA programs—though the list below looks at full-time MBA programs only.
You can read Clear Admit’s analysis of their most recent rankings here.
U.S. News & World Report Methodology
To rank the best MBA programs, U.S. News surveyed all 506 institutions in the U.S. that run MBA programs and are accredited by AACSB International. Of these 506 institutions, 339 responded; based on their data, U.S. News ranked 124 schools.
The U.S. News ranking process can be divided into two halves. The first half examines career and earning outcomes for MBA graduates; the second combines academic metrics for students with corporate opinions on program quality. This year, as with last, emphasis on the former was increased and emphasis on the latter reduced. This change reflects the priorities of incoming MBA students, who usually choose an MBA with the goal of advancing their career and salary.
The U.S. News rankings also take into consideration the caveat mentioned in our introduction: that choosing a business school should always be a highly personal process. Incoming MBA students should consider cost, campus culture, electives, and location when making their decision. With this in mind, U.S. News adds specialized subject rankings to its rankings, in order for students to better grasp how well a business school suits them. These specialized rankings span 3 areas and include finance, international business and marketing.
The U.S. News & World Report Best Business Schools of 2024
1. Stanford Graduate School of Business
1. University of Pennsylvania Wharton
3. Northwestern University Kellogg
3. University of Chicago Booth
5. MIT Sloan
6. Harvard Business School
7. New York University Stern
7. University of California, Berkeley, Haas
10. Dartmouth Tuck
10. UVA Darden
Financial Times
The Financial Times (FT) highlights the world’s best MBA programs. It releases seven annual MBA rankings that cover MBA, EMBA, Master in Finance, Master in Management programs, Online MBA programs and more. This article looks at the Financial Times’ Global MBA rankings, which features the 100 best full-time MBA programs.
You can read Clear Admit’s analysis of the FT’s best MBA programs ranking here.
The Financial Times’ Methodology
132 business schools participated in order to create the Financial Times’ 2024 best MBA program rankings. The FT surveyed alumni from the previous three years (weighting more recent years most heavily), slackening its usual required response rate of 20% to account for disruption to programs caused by Covid-19.
The Financial Times considers these schools in light of 21 criteria. Eight of these are informed by alumni responses and contribute 56% of the final ranking’s weight. These criteria look at topics such as average income, value for money and alumni networks. Twelve criteria are calculated from school data and contribute 34% of the final ranking’s weight. These include faculty, student enrollment, and staff, student and board diversity. The final criterion is research rank, contributing 10% and examining the number of articles published by full-time faculty.
There was just one change to the FT methodology this year, which related to the environmental, social and governance (ESG) rank. This was previously based only on how many teaching hours from core courses were dedicated to ESG; it now also considers alumni evaluation of how well the school taught ESG topics.
The Financial Times Best Business Schools of 2024
1. University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School
2. INSEAD
3. SDA Bocconi School of Management
5. IESE
6. Northwestern Kellogg
6. MIT Sloan
9. Cornell University S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management
10. University of Chicago Booth
Bloomberg BusinessWeek
Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s ranking of the best business schools considers the data collected from surveyed schools, graduating students, alumni, and employers. The site separates MBA programs by region—here, we’re looking at their U.S. program rankings.
You can read Clear Admit’s analysis of their most recent MBA rankings here.
The Bloomberg BusinessWeek Methodology
Bloomberg BusinessWeek ranks the best MBA programs according to feedback from alumni, graduating students and employers of MBAs. These groups are surveyed about topics that cover salaries, employment, classroom environments and networking. The ranking then covers five indexes: compensation, learning, networking, entrepreneurship and—for U.S. schools only—diversity.
There are two steps to the ranking process. The first is to generate weightings for each of the five indexes. This involves asking survey responses to rank the indexes in order of importance, and then weighting the indexes accordingly. The second is to determine school scores for each index. This is done via the answers of the surveyed respondents, who describe their schools performance for each index via numerical scales and “agree or disagree” statements.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek also considers data from MBA Career Services & Employer Alliance (MBA CSEA). For U.S. schools, BusinessWeek compiles data on the race, ethnicity, and gender of schools’ class members.
The Bloomberg BusinessWeek Best Business Schools of 2024
1. Stanford Graduate School of Business
2. University of Chicago Booth
3. Northwestern University Kellogg
4. Dartmouth Tuck
5. University of Virginia Darden
6. Harvard Business School
7. University of Pennsylvania, Wharton
8. University of Michigan Ross
9. Carnegie Mellon University Tepper
10. MIT Sloan
LinkedIn’s ranking details the top 100 MBA programs around the world. The 100-strong, global list is a step up from last year’s ranking, which listed the top 50 MBA Programs in the U.S.
LinkedIn’s ranking process revealed data beyond that which concerned the best schools, spotlighting the top employers of MBA graduates as well as the growing emphasis on “global business skills, cross-cultural competence, and expertise in tech and AI.”
The LinkedIn Methodology
LinkedIn’s MBA rankings are built on LinkedIn data, drawing from the profile information of its members. The site ranks full-time MBA programs that are accredited by AACSB or Equis, have at least 1,500 alumni, and saw at least 400 students graduate between 2019-2023.
For these full-time MBA programs, LinkedIn considers job placement rates (including labor market demand), career advancement (tracking promotions and time taken to progress), network growth and strength (including the connections that alumni have with those in director-level positions), leadership potential (tracking those who have entrepreneurship and C-suite experience post-MBA), and gender diversity.
The LinkedIn Best Business Schools of 2024
1. Stanford Graduate School of Business
2. INSEAD
3. Harvard Business School
4. University of Pennsylvania, Wharton
5. MIT Sloan
7. Northwestern University Kellogg
8. Dartmouth College Tuck
9. Columbia Business School
10. University of Chicago Booth
And that’s a wrap for 2024! Stay tuned in the new year as we bring more coverage of business school rankings, news and more.
