Clear Admit's MBA Ranking News

In case you missed it, the Economist earlier this week broke out the top 20 North American full-time MBA programs, as a follow-up to its global ranking. As an introduction to this North American-specific list, the Economist calls America the “spiritual home of the MBA,” noting that the first MBA was offered there more than a century ago and that today, U.S. schools dominate the publication's global ranking. (Eight of the top 10 business schools in the worldwide ranking are located in U.S.) Among the Top 20 North American MBA programs, the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business claimed the top spot (as it did in the global rankings). Among the other highest-ranking North American schools were several prestigious U.S. names, including Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, Harvard Business School, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, MIT Sloan School of Management and Stanford Graduate School of Business. Read more

When it comes to the satisfaction of its MBA alumni, Stanford Graduate School of Business bests all other business schools, according to Forbes most recent biennial ranking. Forbes evaluated responses from 4,600 graduates from the Class of 2008 to arrive at its top 10 list, polling them on salary and ROI, satisfaction with their education and the preparation it gave them and how happy they are in their current job. Stanford ranked in the top five among schools across all three categories in the 2013 Forbes survey. Its grads reported higher salaries than any others, with median total compensation of $221,000 five years out of school. Stanford grads also gave the school top scores when asked about their education and how prepared they felt relative to graduates from other MBA programs. As far as job satisfaction, Stanford ranked fourth. But when Forbes averaged the satisfaction scores across all three categories for the 50 U.S. schools with the most responses to the survey, Stanford came out on top overall. Read more

U.S. News & World Report released its annual rankings of the best graduate schools, and a familiar cast of characters topped the list of top business schools, though with a few minor shifts. The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania sashayed up from third place up to tie for first with Harvard Business School and Stanford Graduate School of Business. The University of Chicago Booth School of Business gained some ground as well, moving up from the No. 6 spot last year to No. 4 this year. Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, meanwhile, dipped – sliding into the No. 6 spot vacated by Chicago Booth. MIT’s Sloan School of Management, which tied with Kellogg for fourth last year, also slipped, falling to fifth place. Read more

To complement the many MBA rankings out there – most of which seek to evaluate schools according to things like the rigor of their academic programs, the accomplishments of their faculty or the future earnings of their graduates – the Financial Times has this week published the results of its first-ever alternative MBA survey, which looks at considerations generally overlooked by the more formal rankings, such as weather, social life, the quality of the food, and the comfort of the student accommodations. As always, those of us at Clear Admit encourage prospective applicants to use rankings as just one of many information sources they consult as part of their efforts to understand which of the schools they are considering will best help them meet their personal and professional goals. Read more

Harvard Business School (HBS) appeared at the top of the Financial Times Global MBA annual ranking, released yesterday. It was HBS’ second consecutive claim to the number-one spot and its fifth time topping the rankings since they debuted in 1999. Stanford Graduate School of Business also remained steady this year, reclaiming the number-two spot it held last year. The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania slipped to fourth as London Business School stepped into the number-three spot. Columbia Business School and INSEAD tied for fifth. The FT compiles its annual global MBA rankings based on two surveys of the business schools and their alumni. (For this year rankings, alumni who graduated in 2010 were surveyed.) Based on the responses to these surveys, the MBA programs are measured according to the career progression of their alumni, the school’s idea generation and the diversity of students and faculty. Read more

Poets&Quants today released its 2013 composite ranking of the best full-time MBA programs in the United States, revealing that very little has changed since last year. In fact, the top eight programs this year are exactly the same, in the same order, as they were last year. The only change among the top 10 schools was that ninth and tenth place last year (Berkeley's Haas School of Business and Duke University's Fuqua School) flip-flopped this year. P&Q arrives at its rankings by weighing five other leading MBA rankings: Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the Economist, the Financial Times, Forbes, and U.S. News & World Report. The composite ranking, P&Q asserts, helps reduce flaws in the other rankings caused by faulty survey technique, biased methodology or other issues. “The composite index tones down the noise in each of these five surveys to get more directly at the real signal that is being sent,” reads the P&Q report. Read more

In the United States today, nearly four times as many students earn an MBA as earn a law degree, a ratio that was one to one a mere 40 years ago. Even as American demand begins to level off, students in emerging markets, especially India and China, are flocking to the degree in growing numbers. But against this backdrop of swelling popularity, prospective MBA applicants are taking a hard look at the potential return on investment as never before. As follow up to its rankings, released last week, the Economist examined these and other important shifts in the MBA landscape as part of an article published over the weekend. Data from the Economist’s most recent rankings show that the average basic salary for MBA graduates has dropped $1,500 in the past five years, to $94,000. Meanwhile, student surveys the Economist conducted as part of its rankings reveal that students are more focused now on how much they stand to make post-MBA than they were before the economic crisis. Moreover, as salaries have fallen, tuition has climbed. At the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, ranked No. 1 in the Economist 2013 rankings, tuition has gone up by $17,000 since 2008, to $112,000. At Harvard Business School (HBS), it has increased by $25,000 in the same time period. Read more

The Economist’s annual ranking of full-time MBA programs is out, and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business has taken the top spot again, a position it’s held three of the last four years. Unlike the Forbes ranking released earlier this week, which ranks U.S. schools and international schools separately, the Economist compares MBA programs from around the globe. U.S. programs snagged the top four spots, and 16 of the top 25. To compile its rankings, published for the 11th time this year, the Economist surveys MBA students about why they decided to pursue the degree and weights the data collected as follows: opening new career opportunities (35 percent), personal development/educational experience (35 percent); increasing salary (20 percent); and the potential to network (10 percent). Read more

Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) reclaimed the top spot in the Forbes 2013 biennial ranking of MBA programs, released today. The University of Chicago Booth School of Business took second, bumping Harvard Business School (HBS), which topped the list in 2011, to third place. The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School followed up the lead in fourth. Forbes, which ranks full-time MBA programs every two years based on return on investment, found that at the top 25 programs in the United States, the degree still pays off, although it takes longer to do so. For the Class of 2008, the class surveyed for this year’s ranking, the average payback period was 3.7 years, as compared to 2.7 years a decade ago, Forbes reports. Read more