For better or for worse, there are five highly influential MBA rankings: Bloomberg Businessweek, which just celebrated the 30th anniversary of its debut list in 1988; U.S. News & World Report, which began ranking MBAs a year later; The Financial Times, which published the first global MBA ranking; Forbes, whose ranking is centered on return-on-investment, and The Economist. Each ranking is based on a significantly different methodology, and the editorial decisions that go into what and how to measure business education has a major impact on the outcomes...
Instead of merely reporting on the outcomes of each ranking and averaging the five, each ranking is separately weighted to account for our view of the soundness of the methodology and the credibility of the list. (U.S. News is given a weight of 35%, Forbes, 25%, while both The Financial Times and Businessweek is given a 15% weight, and The Economist, 10%.)
Those weights are determined by Poets&Quants Founder and Editor John A. Byrne, who created the first regularly published MBA rankings at Businessweek 30 years ago.
Poets & Quants 2019-20 Composite Ranking of U.S. Fulltime MBA Programs |
| 2019
Rank |
School Name | 2018 Rank | Index | US
News |
Forbes | Business
Week |
Financial
Times |
The Economist |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Stanford GSB | 3 | 100.0 | 2 (4) | 2 (2) | 1 (1) | 1 (1) | 7 (5) |
| #2 | Chicago (Booth) | 4 | 99.6 | 3 (1) | 1 (7) | 4 (5) | 4 (4) | 1 (1) |
| #3 | Harvard Business School | 1 | 99.2 | 3 (1) | 4 (3) | 3 (3) | 2 (3) | 2 (3) |
| #4 | UPenn (Wharton) | 1 | 98.8 | 1 (3) | 5 (1) | 6 (2) | 3 (2) | 4 (4) |
| #5 | Northwestern (Kellogg) | 5 | 96.2 | 6 (6) | 3 (4) | 10 (8) | 9 (8) | 3 (2) |
| #6 | Dartmouth (Tuck) | 9 | 96.1 | 12 (10) | 6 (5) | 2 (19) | 10 (10) | 10 (10) |
| #7 | MIT (Sloan) | 6 | 96.0 | 3 (5) | 7 (8) | 7 (4) | 5 (6) | 16 (14) |
| #8 | Columbia Business School | 7 | 94.8 | 6 (9) | 7 (6) | 9 (7) | 6 (5) | 12 (9) |
| #9 | UC-Berkeley (Haas) | 8 | 94.4 | 6 (7) | 11 (9) | 8 (6) | 7 (7) | 6 (10) |
| #10 | Yale SOM | 11 | 91.1 | 9 (11) | 11 (13) | 14 (11) | 8 (9) | 18 (12) |
| #11 | Virginia (Darden) | 12 | 90.8 | 12 (13) | 13 (11) | 5 (9) | 12 (17) | 13 (8) |
| #12 | Michigan (Ross) | 10 | 89.7 | 10 (7) | 10 (12) | 17 (18) | 16 (15) | 8 (6) |
| #13 | Cornell (Johnson) | 13 | 89.6 | 15 (15) | 9 (10) | 11 (10) | 15 (11) | 11 (16) |
| #14 | Duke (Fuqua) | 14 | 89.5 | 10 (11) | 14 (14) | 20 (15) | 11 (12) | 9 (13) |
| #15 | UCLA (Anderson) | 15 | 88.1 | 16 (16) | 16 (15) | 12 (17) | 14 (14) | 5 (7) |
| #16 | New York (Stern) | 16 | 87.6 | 12 (13) | 20 (21) | 13 (13) | 13 (13) | 14 (15) |
| #17 | Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) | 17 | 84.5 | 17 (17) | 17 (18) | 15 (12) | 18 (19) | 24 (26) |
| #18 | Texas-Austin (McCombs) | 18 | 82.8 | 19 (17) | 18 (17) | 21 (22) | 19 (20) | 20 (19) |
| #19 | Southern California (Marshall) | 22 | 82.5 | 17 (20) | 21 (33) | 22 (13) | 23 (31) | 15 (21) |
| #20 | North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler) | 19 | 82.5 | 19 (19) | 15 (16) | 18 (23) | 26 (18) | 26 (23) |
| #21 | Washington (Foster) | 21 | 81.0 | 21 (22) | 23 (30) | 16 (16) | 25 (23) | 17 (18) |
| #22 | Emory (Goizueta) | 20 | 80.6 | 21 (20) | 22 (23) | 23 (24) | 20 (22) | 21 (22) |
| #23 | Indiana (Kelley) | 25 | 80.1 | 21 (27) | 19 (25) | 25 (28) | 22 (29) | 27 (27) |
| #24 | Georgetown (McDonough) | 23 | 76.9 | 24 (25) | 31 (35) | 19 (20) | 17 (16) | 34 (32) |
| #25 | Rice (Jones) | 24 | 74.6 | 26 (23) | 26 (32) | 31 (26) | 29 (21) | 28 (30) |
| #26 | Georgia Institute of Technology | 27 | 74.3 | 29 (28) | 28 (30) | 24 (27) | 31 (26) | 19 (24) |
| #27 | Notre Dame (Mendoza) | 29 | 74.1 | 26 (31) | 25 (22) | 28 (31) | 30 (40) | 37 (33) |
| #28 | Vanderbilt (Owen) | 26 | 73.6 | 29 (26) | 30 (49) | 30 (21) | 26 (38) | 22 (20) |
| #29 | Washington (Olin) | 28 | 72.5 | 26 (23) | 29 (35) | 38 (32) | 28 (24) | 31 (28) |
| #30 | Brigham Young (Marriott) | 34 | 70.9 | 32 (35) | 24 (19) | 27 (25) | 41 (35) | 36 (NR) |