As we have come to expect with the U.S. News & World Report ranking, movement is the name of the game. This year, the Stanford GSB has found its way back to the top of the list, tying with Wharton for the #1 spot, while Harvard takes its place at #6, and Michigan Ross exits the Top 10. Interestingly, nine schools on this prestigious list share spots, thanks to ties for the #1, #3, #7, and #10 positions in the survey.
U.S. News’ metrics continue to encompass career placement success (50%), quality assessment (25%), and selectivity (25%). One notable adjustment to the career placement success category this year is the introduction of the salary by profession (10%) subcategory, which compares salaries by industry. This change acknowledges that varying pay scales exist for different occupations. The weight was adjusted for each employment subcategory rate to allow for this addition within the category. The weight of the employment rate at graduation is 7% this year (down from 10%), and the weight of the employment rate three months after graduation is 13% (down from 20%). The contribution to the ranking calculation of the mean starting salary and bonus subcategory is unchanged at 20%. U.S. News also changed the calculation approach for the employment subcategories to include two years of data instead of one to compute the averages.
Regardless of the outcomes or the changes in methodology, applicants, students, and alumni continue to study the rankings insatiably. Interestingly, U.S. News encourages prospective students to consider factors beyond the rankings, including “location, campus culture, strength of specific programs, and cost after tuition and financial aid.” We encourage you to do the same and have created a free resource to help you do so: Best MBA Programs: A Guide to Selecting the Right One.
U.S. News reached out to 506 U.S. universities accredited by AACSB International for its survey, receiving 339 responses. The publication then ranked the 124 full-time, in-person, and hybrid programs that had submitted sufficient data. It’s worth noting that U.S. News largely adheres to the data reporting standards set by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) and the MBA Career Services and Employer Alliance (MBA CSEA). GMAC’s GME Admissions Reporting Standards and the MBA CSEA’s are publicly available.
Notable changes this year
- The Stanford GSB returns to the #1 spot, tying with Wharton. The salary outcomes, with the adjustment of comparison of salaries by profession, favored Stanford, helping it leap five spots to claim the #1 seat. Stanford boasted an overall average starting salary and bonus of $209,680 (compared to $198,032 last year), the highest among the programs in the Top 10. Wharton’s average starting salary and bonus amount increased significantly to $201,296, and the school saw a higher placement rate than Stanford, with 94.2% versus 82.8%. Although both schools reported the same GMAT median score of 740, Stanford’s median GPA was 3.8, compared with Wharton’s 3.7. Harvard is the only other school in the Top 10 with a GPA median as high as Stanford’s.
- Chicago Booth slipped from #1 to share #3 with Northwestern Kellogg, which held the #2 spot last year. Booth inches ahead of Kellogg in salary ($204,197 versus $199,888), three-month placement rate (95.0% versus 94.8%), and admit rate (32.6% versus 33.3%). However, it comes in slightly behind Kellogg with a median GMAT of 730, versus 740, and a median GPA of 3.6, versus 3.7.
- While MIT Sloan #5 and Harvard Business School #6 each slipped one spot, they are the only schools to stand on their own at their positions in the Top 10. Each of the other nine schools in the upper tier tie with at least one other program. As we’ve noted, Stanford GSB and Wharton are tied at #1, Chicago Booth and Kellogg are tied at #3, UC-Berkeley Haas reentered the Top 10 to tie with both NYU Stern and the Yale SOM at #7, while Dartmouth Tuck and UVA Darden are tied at #10. After falling out of the Top 10, Michigan Ross now stands at #12, tied with Columbia and Duke Fuqua.
- Looking at the top 25, Vanderbilt Owen jumped seven spots to #20, where it is tied with three other schools: UNC Kenan-Flagler, UCLA Anderson, and Indiana Kelley. UT Austin McCombs moved up four places to #16, tied with Carnegie Mellon Tepper. Other programs shifted just one or two spots up or down, while Cornell Johnson held at #15, and Georgetown McDonough stayed at #24.
The ranking of part-time MBA programs remained relatively static this year. The Chicago Booth and Berkeley Haas programs swapped spots at the top of the ranking, now standing at #1 and #2, respectively. The Michigan Ross (now #6) and Texas McCombs (now #7) programs similarly swapped places.
A notable change is the exit of CMU Tepper from the ranking. The Tepper School combined its traditional part-time MBA program with its online hybrid MBA program and will therefore participate only in the online MBA ranking now. Additionally, U.S. News took specific action to align hybrid and in-person programs with those most comparable. This alignment resulted in 30 fewer programs participating in the rankings. With the departure of Tepper, three schools entered the Top 10, tying for the #10 spot: OSU Fisher, UMD Smith, and UW Foster.
The part-time rankings were based on survey responses from 269 institutions. These schools qualified for the 2024 part-time MBA ranking with master’s level business programs in the United States accredited by AACSB International. According to U.S. News, “The weights of the ranking indicators used in the 2024 part-time MBA methodology were unchanged from last year’s ranking.” Ranking factors included peer assessment (50%), part-time student ratio (12.5%), part-time students total (12.5%), GMAT/GRE scores (10%), undergraduate grade point average (10%), and work experience (5%).
U.S. News 2024 Top 10 Full-Time MBA Programs
| 2024 Rank | 2023 Rank | School | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (tie) | 6 (tie) | Stanford University | Stanford, CA |
| 1 (tie) | 3 | University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) | Philadelphia, PA |
| 3 (tie) | 2 | Northwestern (Kellogg) | Evanston, IL |
| 3 (tie) | 1 | University of Chicago (Booth) | Chicago, IL |
| 5 | 4 | Massachusetts Institution of Technology (Sloan) | Cambridge, MA |
| 6 | 5 | Harvard University | Allston, MA |
| 7 (tie) | 10 | New York University (Stern) | New York, NY |
| 7 (tie) | 11 (tie) | University of California, Berkeley (Haas) | Berkely, CA |
| 7 (tie) | 8 (tie) | Yale University | New Haven, CT |
| 10 (tie) | 6 (tie) | Dartmouth College (Tuck) | Hanover, NH |
| 10 (tie) | 14 | University of Virginia (Darden) | Charlottesville, VA |
U.S. News 2024 Top 10 Part-Time MBA Programs
| 2024 Rank | 2023 Rank | School | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | University of Chicago (Booth) | Chicago, IL |
| 2 | 1 | University of California, Berkeley (Haas) | Berkeley, CA |
| 3 | 3 | Northwestern University (Kellogg) | Evanston, IL |
| 4 | 4 | New York University (Stern) | New York, NY |
| 5 | 5 | University of California, Los Angeles (Anderson) | Los Angeles, CA |
| 6 | 7 | University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Ross) | Ann Arbor, MI |
| 7 | 6 | University of Texas, Austin (McCombs) | Austin, TX |
| 8 | 8 | University of Southern California (Marshall) | Los Angeles, CA |
| 9 | 9 (tie) | Georgetown University (McDonough) | Washington, DC |
| 10 (tie) | 15 (tie) | Ohio State University (Fisher) | Columbus, OH |
| 10 (tie) | 21 (tie) | University of Maryland, College Park (Smith) | College Park, MD |
| 10 (tie) | 11(tie) | University of Washington (Foster) | Seattle, WA |
Hoping to start business school in 2025 at one of these top-ranked programs? Sign up for a free consultation, and be sure to check out our MBA Admissions Consulting Services and work one-on-one with an expert consultant to create an application that will get you accepted!
As the former executive director of admissions at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School and assistant dean of admissions at Georgetown’s McDonough School and the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz School, Kelly Wilson has 23 years’ experience overseeing admissions committees and has reviewed more than 38,000 applications for the MBA and master’s programs in management of information systems, computational finance, business analytics, and product management. Want Kelly to help you get accepted? Click here to get in touch!
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