The Financial Times (FT) Global MBA ranking for 2025 is out–and we take a closer look at where the top 100 programs landed.
To start, here is a quick look at the top 10 of The Financial Times 2025 Global MBA rankings (2024 positions are in parentheses):
| Ranking | School |
|---|---|
| 1 | The Wharton School (1) |
| 2 | Columbia Business School (3 tie) |
| 3 | Iese Business School (5) |
| 4 (tie) | INSEAD (2) |
| 4 (tie) | SDA Bocconi (3 tie) |
| 6 | MIT Sloan School of Management (6 tie) |
| 7 | London Business School (8) |
| 8 | Esade Business School (17) |
| 9 | HEC Paris (12 tie) |
| 10 | Northwestern University Kellogg (6 tie) |
The home of the 2025 NFL Super Bowl Champions also gets to claim the top MBA program of the Financial Times ranking–that is, Philadelphia. Just like the Philadelphia Eagles, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania once again claims the top spot. Columbia Business School slides up to second this year while Europe claims the rest of the top 5 MBAs–Iese in Spain, INSEAD in France, and SDA Bocconi in Italy.
MIT Sloan maintained its #6 position compared to last year, while it’s 2024 companion, Northwestern Kellogg, slipped to #10. LBS, Esade and HEC Paris all moved up this year and filled out the top ten.
HBS and Stanford feel like notable misses from the top ten. Harvard is just outside at #13, while Stanford GSB did not make an appearance in the 2025 FT Global MBA ranking.
Clear Admit Co-Founder Graham Richmond notes, “When it comes to the methodology of the FT ranking, Clear Admit’s own research with top-tier candidates suggests that the weightings used here may not be representative of what’s most important to applicants. Despite these issues, we do see that programs which are generally favored in the applicant marketplace clustering towards the top. In fact, the top-16 U.S. programs are pretty much the exact same batch one sees in other rankings – with the exception of the strange omission of Stanford GSB, which would ordinarily be a part of this group. Similarly, when looking at the European schools at the top end of the ranking, we see the same familiar names one might expect. One can quibble with the ordering within these groups, but fact remains that the very best schools are all making a showing (save Stanford).”
FT Global MBA Ranking 2025: Top U.S. MBA Programs
The Financial Times MBA ranking looks at business schools worldwide, but this can be a challenging task in light of the vast differences from market to market. Richmond comments, “A ranking of business schools across the globe is fraught with challenges given the increasingly heightened ‘regionality’ when it comes to post-MBA career outcomes. Put simply, while Spain’s Esade ranks nine slots ahead of the U.S.A.’s Chicago Booth, a candidate hoping to live and work in the United States post-MBA would be wise to choose Chicago Booth. Similarly, a candidate looking to work in Switzerland or the EU might be better served landing in Lausanne at IMD than they would be at UCLA or UC Berkeley. This is why it’s really important to split the rankings up by region, and for candidates to think long and hard about where they want to ultimately work and settle.”
As such, we like to break out the regions to look at each one individually. In the U.S. market, the top 20 schools in 2025 (ranking in parentheses) are as follows:
- The Wharton School (1)
- Columbia Business School (2)
- MIT: Sloan School of Management (6)
- Northwestern University: Kellogg School of Management (10)
- Duke University Fuqua School of Business (11)
- Harvard Business School (13, tie)
- Cornell University: Johnson (13, tie)
- UC Berkeley: Haas (15, tie)
- University of Chicago: Booth (17)
- UCLA Anderson School of Management (19)
- University of Virginia: Darden (20, tie)
- Dartmouth College: Tuck (20, tie)
- Yale School of Management (24)
- University of Michigan: Ross (29)
- New York University: Stern (31, tie)
- University of Washington: Foster (34)
- Rice Business (39, tie)
- University of Texas at Austin: McCombs (39, tie)
- Georgetown University: McDonough (43)
- Emory University: Goizueta (45)
Stanford GSB does not appear to be included in the FT ranking this year, even though it was ranked #23 in the 2024 FT ranking. Michigan Ross is back on the list after a hiatus last year, coming in at #29. Meanwhile, the biggest gain in ranking overall took place outside of the top 20 U.S. list; Fordham University: Gabelli made the biggest leap of 22 spots from #100 in 2024 to #78 in 2025.
Other North American programs took some considerable dips. Both USC Marshall in California and Queen’s University in Canada dropped 17 spots to #49 and #78, respectively. Carnegie Mellon Tepper and Notre Dame Mendoza fell 16 spots to their new positions of #48 and #74, again respectively. And finally, Georgia Terry landed at #54, 15 spots lower than last year.
FT Global MBA Ranking 2025: Top European and Asian MBA Programs
Looking at Europe, the top 10 programs are as follows (2025 ranking in parentheses):
- IESE Business School (3)
- INSEAD (4, tie)
- SDA Bocconi School of Management (4, tie)
- London Business School (7)
- Esade (8)
- HEC Paris (9)
- IE Business School (18)
- IMD (22, tie)
- University of Oxford: Saïd (26)
- ESCP Business School (28)
Outside of the European top 10, the University College Dublin: Smurfit moved up 18 spaces compared to last year, coming in at #73. IMD leapt 14 spots compared to last year, too, to #22.
For Asia, the top five business schools line up in this order (2025 ranking in parentheses):
- CEIBS (12)
- Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (15, tie)
- Nanyang Business School, NTU Singapore (22, tie)
- Peking University: Guanghua (25)
- Indian School of Business (27)
There are many familiar names in the top five Asian business schools. CEIBS made an impressive jump from #21 to #12, while Shanghai also improved significantly from #24 to #15. Further down the list, XLRI made big gains of 16 spots to land at #82.
Ranking Methodology
While 132 schools participated in the 2024 edition, 125 met the participation criteria this year. FT ranks the top 100 MBA programs in the world using 21 different criteria. Eight of these are alumni-based, making up 56 percent of the ranking. To be included in the ranking, schools need at least a 20 percent response rate and a minimum of 20 responses total from Class of 2021 alumni. Because of disruption from the Covid-19 pandemic, Financial Times considered schools with a lower response rate.
See here for more details on the ranking methodology.
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