U.S. News just released its 2021 ranking of full-time and part-time MBA programs. The rankings are based on expert opinions about the quality of each program and statistical indicators that calculate the quality of a program’s faculty, research, and students. The reputation surveys were sent to academics and professionals in fall 2019 and early 2020. This year, for the first time, the specialties of business analytics, real estate, and project management are ranked.
In order to rank each school. U.S. News assessed the data for each quality indicator and then standardized the value of each indicator about its mean. Each indicator has a weight assigned to it, which indicates U.S. News’ judgment about their relative importance, after consulting with experts in the field.
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These final scores were rescaled to give the highest-scoring school a score of 100, with the other schools’ scores recalculated as a percentage of the top score. A school with a score of 100 did not necessarily receive the highest score on every indicator, it merely accrued the highest composite score.
Highlights of the 2021 MBA Ranking
- The biggest news of all is that Harvard Business School slipped down to sixth place this year from third in the 2019 full-time rankings.
- Stanford University gained a position this year to tie the University of Pennsylvania for the top slot for full-time MBA programs.
- Northwestern University jumped from a three-way tie for 6th place last year to a two-way tie this year at #3 with the University of Chicago.
- New York University broke into the Top 10 this year, jumping from a three-way tie for #12 to the #10 spot.
- Further down in the rankings, North Carolina State University leapt more than 30 spots, from a tie at #85 to #52 this year.
- Chicago Booth maintained the top position among part-time MBA programs.
- Also in the part-time rankings, the University of Washington joined the Top 10 this year, rising from a two-way tie at #12 to #10 this year.
2021 Top 10 full-time MBA programs
| Rank | School | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Stanford University | Stanford, CA |
| 1 | UPenn Wharton | Philadelphia, PA |
| 3 | Northwestern Kellogg | Evanston, IL |
| 3 | Chicago Booth | Chicago, IL |
| 5 | MIT Sloan | Cambridge, MA |
| 6 | Harvard Business School | Boston, MA |
| 7 | UC Berkeley-Haas | Berkeley, CA |
| 8 | Columbia Business School | New York, NY |
| 9 | Yale SOM | New Haven, CT |
| 10 | New York University Stern | New York, NY |
2021 Top 10 part-time MBA programs
| Rank | School | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chicago Booth | Chicago, IL |
| 2 | UC Berkeley-Haas | Berkeley, CA |
| 3 | Northwestern Kellogg | Evanston, IL |
| 4 | NYU Stern | New York, NY |
| 5 | UCLA Anderson | Los Angeles, CA |
| 6 | Michigan Ross | Ann Arbor, MI |
| 7 | UT McCombs | Austin, TX |
| 8 | Carnegie Mellon University Tepper | Pittsburgh, PA |
| 9 | Indiana Kelley | Bloomington, IN |
| 10 | Emory Goizueta | Atlanta, GA |
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