Clear Admit's MBA Ranking News
A comprehensive archive of all Clear Admit MBA Blog posts covering graduate business school rankings according to leading news and media agencies.
Published: April 12, 2015
Financial Times Data Suggest MBA ROI Is Greater for Younger Students
Parsing through data from its 2015 Global MBA rankings, the Financial Times has come to the conclusion that the earlier you get your MBA degree, the more you stand to boost your salary, both in percentage and absolute terms. Combining survey responses from the MBA class of 2011 with analyses of their career progress and salaries, the latest FT rankings data reveal a more significant jump in pay for younger graduates in the three years after graduation than for their older classmates.
According to the FT analysis, participants aged 24 and under when they began their degree enjoyed salary increases of nearly $69,000 three years out from graduation, a 145 percent increase over their pre-MBA salary. Those who were 27 to 28 when they began their degree program reported an average pay increase of $67,000, to nearly double their pre-MBA salary. The oldest members of the class, those aged 31 or above, had an average pay increase of $56,000, representing a roughly 70 percent bump over their pre-MBA salaries. This pattern was observed in all industry sectors and countries, regardless of whether graduates worked overseas or changed industries, according to the FT.
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Columbia Business School Dean Proposes Radically Simple B-School Rankings Methodology
Penning a recent column for Forbes, the dean of Columbia Business School (CBS) took on the question of whether and how much the seemingly ever-multiplying rankings of leading business schools matter. His answer: yes – but an applicant’s individual needs should outrank any number affixed to a school in the many rankings that abound.
CBS Dean Glenn Hubbard, an economist, argues that the quality of a business school can be measured by two simple metrics, input and output. By input he means applications, specifically how many applications a school gets and whether application volume is trending up or down. “It stands to reason that the marketplace of prospective students will send the most applications to the best schools, which will, in turn, have more selective admission rates,” Hubbard wrote.
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Published: March 18, 2015
Another Shake-Up in the Works for Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s MBA Rankings
When Duke’s Fuqua School of Business shot to the top of Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s 2014 rankings, Fuqua celebrated, but many others in the admissions world scratched their heads. How could a school ranked 22nd in student satisfaction kick long-standing, top-ranked schools to the curb? (FYI : Duke had only ever finished in BW's top five once, 14 years ago, when it came in fifth.)
Amid widespread questions of credibility regarding the new methodology that led to the 2014 results, Bloomberg BW this week (March 16) emailed business school officials to say that it has plans for yet another overhaul of its rankings methodology and plans to publish a new ranking incorporating new and differently weighted core metrics next October. It also announced that beginning with the October publication, its MBA rankings will now be published annually, a major shift from the biennial schedule it has upheld since the BW rankings launched in 1988.
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Published: March 10, 2015
Stanford GSB Edges Out HBS, Wharton in 2016 U.S. News & World Report Rankings
Stanford’s Graduate School of Business took the number one spot in the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings of the nation’s best MBA programs, released yesterday, knocking Harvard Business School (HBS) to second and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School to third. Last year, the three powerhouse schools tied for first place, but slight differences on core metrics caused HBS and Wharton to slip this year.
U.S. News uses multiple core measurements to compile its rankings, with the greatest weight given to quality assessments by deans and MBA directors at peer schools and corporate recruiter survey scores. Wharton’s scores slipped in both these regards, as well as in average pay for its MBA graduates, precipitating its drop this year in the rankings.
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Published: February 10, 2015
Which Business School’s Alumni Network Reigns Supreme?
Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business can claim top honors for the strength of its alumni network, according to a recent Economist ranking, in which current MBA students were asked to rate their school’s network. Nine of the top 10 strongest alumni networks are affiliated with U.S. schools, the Economist notes. “They, after all, have the biggest incentive, being the world leaders at tapping into their alumni networks to secure huge financial gifts. Such schools spend a lot of resources on maintaining relations with ex-students,” read the Economist’s analysis.
As for what helped Tuck secure the very top spot, here’s what the Economist hypothesized: “Its fierce collegiate spirit is famous, perhaps fostered by its setting in the small, sleepy town of Hanover, New Hampshire, which means that students have little else to do but bond.”
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Published: November 11, 2014
Demystifying the Mysterious World of Business School Rankings
It’s not every day that MBA rankings end up trending on Facebook, and yet yesterday that’s exactly what happened. When Bloomberg BusinessWeek released its biennial ranking of full-time MBA programs, the results shocked many and created quite a buzz. According to Bloomberg BW’s most recent calculations, Duke’s Fuqua School of Business has stolen the number one spot, knocking Harvard Business School out of the top five for the first time in history.
Just how did Bloomberg BW decide which programs rose to the top and which fell from grace? As it turns out, the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University just a few weeks ago released an infographic that provides a clear and concise overview showcasing the rankings methodologies employed by five major publications: Bloomberg BW, along with U.S. News & World Report, the Financial Times, the Economist and Forbes.
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Published: November 10, 2014
Duke’s Fuqua School of Business Tops Latest Bloomberg BusinessWeek Ranking
Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business shot to the top of Bloomberg Businessweek’s biennial ranking of full-time MBA programs, released today, up from No. 6 two years ago. In the process, the North Carolina school unseated the reigning University of Chicago Booth School of Business and pushed Harvard Business School (HBS) out of the top five for the first time in the history of the rankings.
The formula Bloomberg BW employs to arrive at its rankings is as follows: 45 percent of the score is based on how recruiters rate MBA hires from the school, another 45 percent is determined by how graduating MBAs judge their program and the remaining 10 percent is based on faculty productivity, as measured by a tally of research published in leading journals.
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Published: October 22, 2014
U.S. News & World Report Ranks Business Schools by Graduates’ Indebtedness
Rankings of graduate management education programs abound, each with their own particular criteria for assessing which business schools ultimately come out on top. Separate from its overall business school rankings, U.S. News & World Report recently used data collected from schools to determine the top 10 programs from which MBA students graduate with the most debt.
The number one spot goes to Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where full-time MBA students from the 2013 class who borrowed for business school had an average indebtedness of $108,186. Fuqua’s full-time MBA students had more debt than any of the other 86 ranked institutions, according to data submitted to U.S. News.
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Economist Ranks Top 20 North American MBA Programs, Chicago Booth Leads
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.
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Published: April 15, 2014
Stanford Tops Forbes Rankings of Most Satisfied MBA Graduates
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.
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Published: March 10, 2014
Harvard, Stanford, Wharton Tie for First in U.S. News Business School Rankings
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.
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Published: February 10, 2014
Financial Times Publishes First Alternative MBA Survey
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.
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Published: January 26, 2014
Harvard Business School Again Tops Financial Times Global MBA Ranking
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.
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Published: December 1, 2013
Little Change Year Over Year in Poets&Quants’ MBA Rankings
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.
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Published: October 14, 2013
Change Is the Only Constant Where MBA Programs Are Concerned
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.
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Published: October 10, 2013
University of Chicago Booth School of Business Holds Top Spot in Economist MBA Rankings
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).
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Published: October 8, 2013
Stanford Graduate School of Business Returns to Number One Spot in Forbes 2013 MBA Rankings
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.
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