by Kelly Wilson
U.S. News & World Report 2025 MBA Rankings [Full-Time & Part-Time]
As we have come to expect with the U.S. News & World Report MBA rankings, movement is the name of the game. The Wharton School holds the top spot this year, while the Stanford GSB shifts down to tie with Northwestern Kellogg at #2. Chicago Booth also moves down one spot, to the #4 place, while MIT Sloan remains at #5 in the survey. Tying for #6 in the rankings are Harvard Business School (HBS), NYU Stern, and Dartmouth Tuck, while Columbia Business School (CBS) returns to the top ten, at #9. Rounding out the top group is the Yale SOM at #10.
U.S. News’ metrics continue to encompass career placement success (50%), quality assessment by deans/directors and corporate recruiters/company contacts (25%), and selectivity (25%). The ranking maintains its composition of career-related factors for career placement success. Subcategories of this section of the survey include salary by profession (10%), which compares salaries by industry and acknowledges that varying pay scales exist for different occupations; the employment rate at graduation (7%); the employment rate three months after graduation (13%); and the mean starting salary and bonus (20%). U.S. News collected scores for both the traditional and new versions of the GMAT for the first time this year. It used percentiles as components for the selectivity analysis, along with GRE scores, GPAs (undergraduate), and acceptance rates.
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: .
U.S. News reached out to 508 U.S. universities accredited by AACSB International for its survey, receiving 337 responses. The publication then ranked the 133 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 (MBACSEA). GMAC’s GME Admissions Reporting Standards and the MBACSEA’s are publicly available.
Notable Changes This Year
- Wharton claimed the top spot after tying with the Stanford GSB last year. The program boasts an overall starting salary and bonus of $200,724 this year, falling behind the Stanford GSB, Chicago Booth, and NYU Stern for the highest salary (two-year average). The school achieved a 90.4% placement rate three months after graduation, ranking among the top two placement rates. Wharton maintained a median GMAT score of 740 (old scale) and a 3.7 GPA, positioning it among a group of seven schools with the highest median GMAT scores, just behind the Stanford GSB and Northwestern Kellogg’s GPA.
- The Stanford GSB slipped from #1 to share the #2 spot with Northwestern Kellogg, which was tied at #3 last year. Stanford surpasses Kellogg in salary ($206,995 versus $199,146, respectively) but lags behind in the three-month placement rate (80.6% versus 89.6%, respectively), and has the best admit rate in the rankings, well ahead of Kellogg’s (6.80% versus 28.6%, respectively). However, Stanford and Kellogg both have a median GMAT of 740 and a median GPA of 3.8.
- While Chicago Booth slipped one spot to #4, MIT Sloan (#5) and HBS (#6) retained their positions from last year. However, HBS shares the #6 spot in a three-way tie with NYU Stern and Dartmouth Tuck. CBS is the only newcomer in the top ten this year, moving up from #12 to #9. Falling out of the top ten this year are UVA Darden and Berkeley Haas, which are tied at #11.
- Looking at the top 25, Ohio State (Fisher) made the biggest jump from #30 to #24. Cornell Johnson and Texas McCombs held their relative spots of #15 and #16, respectively. The remaining programs generally shifted up or down one or two spots.
The ranking of part-time MBA programs remained relatively static this year. Northwestern Kellogg joins Chicago Booth and Berkeley Haas to tie for the #1 spot. NYU Stern and UCLA Anderson held their places of #4 and #5, respectively, while Michigan Ross (now #7) and Texas McCombs (now #6) swapped places this year. Entering the top ten are the University of Minnesota (Carlson) and Georgia Institute of Technology (Scheller), tied at #10.
The part-time rankings were based on survey responses from which 241 schools qualified for the 2025 ranking. 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 2025 Top 10 Full-Time MBA Programs
| 2025 Rank | 2024 Rank | School | Location |
| 1 | 1 (tie) | University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) | Philadelphia, PA |
| 2 (tie) | 1 (tie) | Stanford University | Stanford, CA |
| 2 (tie) | 3 (tie) | Northwestern (Kellogg) | Evanston, IL |
| 4 | 3 (tie) | University of Chicago (Booth) | Chicago, IL |
| 5 | 5 | Massachusetts Institution of Technology (Sloan) | Cambridge, MA |
| 6 (tie) | 6 | Harvard University | Allston, MA |
| 6 (tie) | 7 (tie) | New York University (Stern) | New York, NY |
| 6 (tie) | 10 (tie) | Dartmouth College (Tuck) | Hanover, NH |
| 9 | 12 (tie) | Columbia University | New York, NY |
| 10 | 7 (tie) | Yale University | New Haven, CT |
U.S. News 2025 Top 10 Part-Time MBA Programs
| 2025 Rank | 2024 Rank | School | Location |
| 1 (tie) | 1 | University of Chicago (Booth) | Chicago, IL |
| 1 (tie) | 2 | University of California, Berkeley (Haas) | Berkeley, CA |
| 1 (tie) | 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 Texas, Austin (McCombs) | Austin, TX |
| 7 | 6 | University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Ross) | Ann Arbor, MI |
| 8 | 10 (tie) | Ohio State University (Fisher) | Columbus, OH |
| 9 | 8 | University of Southern California (Marshall) | Los Angeles, CA |
| 10 (tie) | 9 | Georgetown University (McDonough) | Washington, DC |
| 10 (tie) | 17 | Georgia Institute of Technology (Scheller) | Atlanta, GA |
| 10 (tie) | 15 | University of Minnesota – Twin Cities (Carlson) | Minneapolis, MN |
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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