List of United States graduate business school rankings
List of United States business school rankings is a tabular listing of some of the business schools and their affiliated universities located in the United States that are included in one or more of the rankings of full-time Master of Business Administration programs. Rankings are typically published by magazines or websites. This list is not a comprehensive list of business schools in the United States. These rankings are a subset of college and university rankings. Business schools are university-level institutions generally affiliated with a university or college that produces students who attain business administration degrees. Most of the schools listed in the rankings below are accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Some of the publications shown here have related rankings for undergraduate, part-time and executive curricula.
There is currently some controversy among faculty and administrators in American institutions of higher education regarding the request by the surveyors to have college presidents give their subjective opinion of other colleges because some of the methodologies are deemed misleading and a disservice. This has resulted in a movement surrounding the President's letter.
History
Most modern university ranking systems are comparably young. The origins of ranking educational institutions based on their academic and other performance are usually traced back towards the end of the 19th / the beginning if the 20th century.Marketing significance
Business school rankings are important to the various business schools because they are an important marketing tool used to recruit top students, and lure recruiters from the top companies. Business schools attempt to achieve higher rankings in order that they may obtain the top students who will over the course of their careers most likely benefit the school by achieving high ranking positions, attaining great influence, and accumulating great wealth. Such students often are able to help other students attain better jobs. Students use the rankings to choose their school, and creators of the rankings produce them to aid in this decision.More than half of recruiters said they believe the quality of MBA graduates is the same or better currently compared with past years. Some of the most renowned schools, such as Harvard and Stanford, do not rank as highly as their stature might suggest. Recruiters complain that they often find graduates of some of the most famous institutions more arrogant and less collegial than the MBAs they meet at other schools. Recruiters also noted that "some of the large, elite schools also don't seem to enjoy as many close, personal relationships with recruiters as smaller MBA programs do."
Ranking techniques
The rankings are based on a variety of factors such as standardized test scores of students, salary of recent graduates, survey results of graduates and/or recruiters, the specific schools that choose to participate in a market survey, the number of top companies recruiting at the school and a variety of attributes. The ratings vary significantly by method used to determine the success of each program. For instance, the Forbes and Financial Times results are based on long-term graduate career progress concerns, the Bloomberg Businessweek and Economist polls evaluate short-term experiences of the students with their program, U.S. News & World Report consider the recent experiences of recruiters with the program, and other rankings like the Aspen Institute Beyond Grey Pinstripes measure integration of sustainability material into business programs.The following is a short summary of the different recognized rankings:
Main rankings
''U.S. News & World Report''
The U.S. News & World Report uses a combination of the objective and subjective as well. The magazine seeks "expert opinion about program quality and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school's faculty, research, and students." However, it ranks a broad spectrum of professional school programs such as business schools, law schools, and medical schools as well as a variety of programs specific academic disciplines such as the social sciences or humanities. The business opinion data incorporates responses from deans, program directors, and senior faculty about the academic quality of their programs as well as the opinions of professionals who actually do the hiring of the new MBA graduates from the schools. The statistical data combines measures of the qualities of the incoming students and as well as the faculty with measures of post graduate success as related to their degrees. There were 382 programs that responded out of 402 solicited, and the formula used a strict combination of quality assessment, placement success, and student selectivity.''Bloomberg Businessweek''
The Bloomberg Businessweek rankings, which are based on three sources of data, are published in mid-October of even numbered years. The 2006 student survey of 45 online questions of students' ratings of their programs was distributed to 16,595 students three weeks before graduation; there were 9,290 responses. The recruiter survey determines how many MBAs a recruiter's company hired in the previous two years and which schools it actively recruits from. 223 respondents participated out of 426 solicited. The intellectual capital is determined based on a formula incorporating academic publications in journals, books written, and faculty size.Forbes Magazine
The Forbes magazine methodology was to calculate a five-year return on investment for 2002 graduates. Forbes surveyed 18,500 alumni of 102 MBA programs and used their pre-enrollment and post-graduate business school salary information as a basis for comparing post-MBA compensation with the cost of attending the programs.The Economist
The Economist Intelligence Unit, the business information arm of the Economist Group, gathered results from two internet questionnaires, one of business schools and one of their students and recent graduates, and used them to rate business schools located all over the world. Information provided by the schools made up 80% of the ranking, with student and alumni responses accounting for only 20%. Factors in the evaluation included faculty:student ratio, GMAT scores of incoming students, student body diversity, foreign languages offered, percentage of graduates finding jobs within three months after graduation, percentage of graduates finding jobs through the school's career service, graduates' salaries and the comparison of pre-enrollment and post-graduation salaries, and student/alumni evaluations of the program, facilities, services, and alumni network. Results were tabulated using a smoothing method incorporating the three previous years' results. The organization used strict data provision thresholds, with the result that some highly regarded schools were omitted from the list of 100 ranked schools.Financial Times
The Financial Times poll was the result of over 10,000 respondents to nearly 23000 electronic questionnaires of alumni from 155 qualifying business schools. The survey began in July 2006 and all internationally accredited programs that are at least five years old and that have produced at least 30 graduates in each of the last three years were solicited. 113 of the 155 had at least 20 respondents and at least a 20 percent response rate. The questionnaire used twenty criteria in three main areas. The poll actually presents all twenty criteria to the reader. Eight criteria are based on alumni responses; eleven criteria are based on business school responses, and the final criterion is based on a research index produced by the Financial Times. The survey responses are audited by KPMG.The Financial Times has also produced a "ranking of rankings" summarizing five of the individual rankings. They produce United States, and European summary rankings based on all five and a global summary ranking using the Wall Street Journal, Economist and Financial Times. The summary is based on underlying polls in which a school placed in the top ten using an average of the ordinal placements. The summary excludes the U.S. News & World Report results.
Academic Ranking of World Universities
The Academic Ranking of World Universities includes every institution that has any Nobel Laureates, Fields Medals, and highly cited researchers. In addition, major universities of every country with significant amount of papers indexed by Science Citation Index-Expanded and Social Science Citation Index are also included. Having alumni of an institution winning Nobel Prizes in Economics since 1951 attributes 10% of the score. Staff of an institution winning Turing Awards in computer science since 1961 contributes 15% of the score. Highly cited researchers in economics/business category get 25% weighting. Papers indexed in SSCI in economics/business fields gets 25%. Finally, the percentage of papers published in top 20% journals of economics/business fields to that in all economics/business journals gets 25% weighting.Other
Aspen Institute
Rankings based on attributes other than standardized test scores, salary of graduates, and similar attributes also exist. The Beyond Grey Pinstripes ranking, compiled by the Aspen Institute and published biannually, is based entirely on the integration of social and environmental stewardship into university curriculum and faculty research. Data for this survey is solicited from university administrators at accredited colleges, and audited by teams of Ph.D. scoring fellows. Rankings are calculated on the amount of sustainability coursework made available to students, amount of student exposure to relevant material, amount of coursework focused on stewardship by for-profit corporations, and relevant faculty research. The 2011 survey and ranking include data from 150 universities.Criticism
The ranking of business schools has been discussed in articles and on academic websites.Critics of ranking methodologies maintain that any published rankings should be viewed with caution for the following reasons:
- Rankings exhibit intentional selection bias as they limit the surveyed population to a small number of MBA programs and ignore the majority of schools, many with excellent offerings.
- Ranking methods may be subject to personal biases and statistically flawed methodologies.
- Rankings use no objective measures of program quality.
- The same list of schools appears in each ranking with some variation in ranks, so a school ranked as number 1 in one list may be number 17 in another list.
- Rankings tend to concentrate on representing MBA schools themselves, but some schools offer MBA programs of different qualities and yet the ranking will only rely upon information from the full-time program.
- A high rank in a national publication tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Some leading business schools including Harvard, INSEAD, Wharton and Sloan provide limited cooperation with certain ranking publications due to their perception that rankings are misused.
Rankings
Historical rankings
The historical rankings of the top MBA programs show little variation, even over a long time period. In 1977, MBA Magazine surveyed business schools deans to come up with a ranking which listed The Wharton School, Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Booth School of Business, and the MIT Sloan School of Management as their top 5. These schools plus the Kellogg School of Management have always comprised the top 5 schools in every U.S. News & World Report ranking. With the addition of Columbia Business School, these seven schools which are most frequently listed at the top of various rankings have been referred to as "America's seven most powerful schools".Recent individual rankings
Below all schools that ranked on any of the lists below are ordered alphabetically and presented with their numerical rankings in the respective lists. The following abbreviations are used in the column headings: USN - U.S. News & World Report, BW - Bloomberg Businessweek, Ec - The Economist, FT - Financial Times, BI - Business Insider, QS - Quacquarelli Symonds and ARWU - Academic Ranking of World Universities.Business School | University | Location | USN 2019 | BW 2019 | Forbes 2019 | USN 2017 | BI 2016 | FT 2016 | BW 2015 | Ec 2015 | QS 2015 |
A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management | University of California Riverside | California, Riverside | 91 | NR | 93 | - | 69 | ||||
Argyros School of Business and Economics | Chapman University | California, Orange | 85 | NR | - | 68 | |||||
Atkinson Graduate School of Management | Willamette University | Oregon, Salem | 99-131 | 82 | 57 | - | 70 | ||||
Babcock Graduate School of Management | Wake Forest University | North Carolina, Winston-Salem | NR | NR | - | ||||||
Bauer College of Business | University of Houston | Texas, Houston | 95 | 74 | 93 | ||||||
Bennett S. LeBow College of Business | Drexel University | Pennsylvania, Philadelphia | 84 | NR | 88 | ||||||
Binghamton University School of Management | Binghamton University | New York, Binghamton | 89 | NR | 77 | ||||||
Booth School of Business | University of Chicago | Illinois, Chicago | 3 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 8 | 2 | 1 | 4 |
Brandeis International Business School | Brandeis University | Massachusetts, Waltham | NR | 90 | |||||||
Busch School of Business and Economics | Catholic University of America | Washington, DC | NR | NR | |||||||
Carl H. Lindner College of Business | University of Cincinnati | Ohio, Cincinnati | 97 | 86 | 79 | 63 | |||||
Carlson School of Management | University of Minnesota | Minnesota, Minneapolis | 35 | 35 | 32 | 32 | 71 | 45 | 55 | ||
Carroll School of Management | Boston College | Massachusetts, Chestnut Hill | 43 | 49 | 44 | 69 | |||||
Raymond J. Harbert College of Business | Auburn University | Alabama, Auburn | 69 | 85 | 83 | - | |||||
Charlton College of Business | University of Massachusetts Dartmouth | Massachusetts, Dartmouth | NR | NR | |||||||
Columbia Business School | Columbia University | New York, New York City | 6 | 9 | 7 | 9 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 12 | 5 |
Cox School of Business | Southern Methodist University | Texas, Dallas | 43 | 42 | 45 | 52 | 32 | 82 | |||
Crummer Graduate School of Business | Rollins College | Florida, Winter Park | NR | NR | 51 | ||||||
Manderson Graduate School of Business | University of Alabama | Alabama, Tuscaloosa | 50 | NR | 50 | 54 | |||||
Daniels College of Business | University of Denver | Denver, Colorado | 91 | 83 | |||||||
Darden Graduate School of Business Administration | University of Virginia | Virginia, Charlottesville | 12 | 5 | 13 | 14 | 11 | 12 | 2 | 37 | |
David Eccles School of Business | University of Utah | Utah, Salt Lake City | 54 | 51 | 36 | 57 | 59 | ||||
E. J. Ourso College of Business | Louisiana State University | Louisiana, Baton Rouge | 69 | NR | 79 | ||||||
E. Philip Saunders College of Business | Rochester Institute of Technology | New York, Henrietta | 93 | 93 | 91 | ||||||
Eli Broad College of Business | Michigan State University | Michigan, East Lansing | 38 | 39 | 27 | 37 | 38 | 65 | 30 | 35 | |
Eller College of Management | University of Arizona | Arizona, Tucson | 52 | 61 | 49 | 93 | |||||
Fisher College of Business | Ohio State University | Ohio, Columbus | 31 | 41 | 41 | 27 | 75 | 39 | 31 | ||
Florida International University College of Business / Chapman Graduate School of Business | Florida International University | Florida, Miami | NR | 94 | |||||||
Foster School of Business | University of Washington | Washington, Seattle | 21 | 16 | 23 | 27 | 31 | 49 | 20 | 37 | |
Fox School of Business | Temple University | Pennsylvania, Philadelphia | NR | NR | 32 | 53 | |||||
Freeman School of Business | Tulane University | Louisiana, New Orleans | 63 | 69 | 59 | 73 | |||||
Fuqua School of Business | Duke University | North Carolina, Durham | 10 | 20 | 14 | 12 | 13 | 21 | 8 | 20 | 13 |
F. W. Olin Graduate School of Business | Babson College | Massachusetts, Wellesley | 63 | 56 | 69 | 40 | 90 | 56 | |||
Gabelli School of Business | Fordham University | New York, New York City | 63 | 57 | 58 | 73 | 72 | ||||
Gatton College of Business and Economics | University of Kentucky | Kentucky, Lexington | 67 | 86 | 86 | 73 | |||||
Gies College of Business | University of Illinois | Illinois, Champaign | 47 | NR | 40 | 43 | 91 | 57 | |||
Goizueta Business School | Emory University | Georgia, Atlanta | 21 | 23 | 22 | 20 | 23 | 55 | 15 | 25 | |
Graziadio School of Business and Management | Pepperdine University | California, Malibu | 74 | 63 | 61 | 65 | 74 | ||||
Haas School of Business | University of California, Berkeley | California, Berkeley | 6 | 8 | 11 | 7 | 10 | 7 | 9 | 6 | 12 |
Hankamer School of Business | Baylor University | Texas, Waco | 57 | 79 | 65 | ||||||
Harvard Business School | Harvard University | Massachusetts, Boston | 3 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 1 |
Howard University School of Business | Howard University | Washington, D.C. | 67 | 45 | 50 | ||||||
Hult International Business School | Hult International Business School | Massachusetts, Cambridge | NR | 66 | 62 | 65 | |||||
Iowa State University College of Business | Iowa State University | Iowa, Ames | 47 | NR | 65 | ||||||
Isenberg School of Management | University of Massachusetts Amherst | Massachusetts, Amherst | 74 | NR | 57 | ||||||
Poole College of Management | North Carolina State University | North Carolina, Raleigh | 85 | 47 | 57 | 29 | |||||
Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management | Rice University | Texas, Houston | 26 | 31 | 26 | 29 | 41 | 53 | 19 | 45 | |
Chaifetz School of Business | Saint Louis University | Missouri, St. Louis | NR | NR | |||||||
Katz School of Business | University of Pittsburgh | Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh | 43 | 54 | 37 | 53 | 98 | 44 | 69 | ||
Kelley School of Business | Indiana University | Indiana, Bloomington | 21 | 25 | 19 | 21 | 34 | 54 | 28 | 29 | |
Kellogg School of Management | Northwestern University | Illinois, Evanston | 6 | 10 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 11 | 3 | 7 | 6 |
Kenan-Flagler Business School | University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill | North Carolina, Chapel Hill | 19 | 18 | 15 | 18 | 20 | 41 | 17 | 33 | |
Kellstadt Graduate School of Business | DePaul University | Illinois, Chicago | NR | NR | 93 | ||||||
Kogod School of Business | American University | Washington, D.C. | 99-131 | 91 | 28 | ||||||
Krannert School of Management | Purdue University | Indiana, West Lafayette | 74 | 78 | 40 | 50 | 53 | ||||
Leavey School of Business | Santa Clara University | California, Santa Clara | NR | NR | |||||||
Leeds School of Business | University of Colorado at Boulder | Colorado, Boulder | 79 | 67 | 60 | 79 | 71 | ||||
Liautaud Graduate School of Business | University of Illinois at Chicago | Illinois, Chicago | NR | NR | |||||||
Lubin School of Business | Pace University | New York, New York City | 99-131 | NR | |||||||
Lundquist College of Business | University of Oregon | Eugene, Oregon | 97 | 88 | |||||||
Marriott School of Management | Brigham Young University | Utah, Provo | 32 | 27 | 24 | 34 | 44 | 80 | 27 | ||
Scheller College of Business | Georgia Institute of Technology | Georgia, Atlanta | 29 | 24 | 28 | 29 | 39 | 71 | 23 | ||
Marshall School of Business | University of Southern California | California, Los Angeles | 17 | 22 | 21 | 24 | 32 | 52 | 25 | 71 | |
Martin J. Whitman School of Management | Syracuse University | New York, Syracuse | 89 | 65 | 88 | 67 | |||||
Mason School of Business | College of William & Mary | Virginia, Williamsburg | 54 | 34 | 44 | 57 | 37 | ||||
Massry Center for Business | University at Albany, State University of New York | New York, Albany | 99-131 | NR | 91 | ||||||
Mays Business School | Texas A&M University | Texas, College Station | 40 | 53 | 33 | 38 | 42 | 22 | |||
McCallum Graduate School of Business | Bentley University | Massachusetts, Waltham | NR | 84 | |||||||
McCombs School of Business | University of Texas at Austin | Texas, Austin | 19 | 21 | 18 | 17 | 21 | 47 | 21 | 39 | |
McDonough School of Business | Georgetown University | Washington, D.C. | 24 | 19 | 31 | 21 | 25 | 44 | 26 | 40 | |
Mendoza College of Business | University of Notre Dame | Indiana, South Bend | 26 | 28 | 25 | 29 | 24 | 76 | 31 | 44 | |
Merage School of Business | University of California, Irvine | California, Irvine | 43 | 46 | 43 | 44 | 57 | 54 | |||
Michael F. Price College of Business | University of Oklahoma | Oklahoma, Norman | 58 | 64 | 83 | 52 | |||||
MIT Sloan School of Management | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Massachusetts, Cambridge | 3 | 7 | 7 | 4 | 5 | 9 | 4 | 15 | 7 |
Moore School of Business | University of South Carolina | South Carolina, Columbia | 74 | 70 | 71 | 96 | |||||
Naveen Jindal School of Management | University of Texas at Dallas | Texas, Richardson | 38 | 36 | 46 | 38 | 42 | ||||
D'Amore-McKim School of Business | Northeastern University | Massachusetts, Boston | 58 | 75 | 54 | 61 | |||||
Neeley School of Business | Texas Christian University | Texas, Fort Worth | 61 | 40 | 71 | 38 | 63 | ||||
Olin Business School | Washington University in St. Louis | Missouri, St. Louis | 26 | 38 | 29 | 21 | 30 | 80 | 35 | 41 | |
Owen Graduate School of Management | Vanderbilt University | Tennessee, Nashville | 29 | 30 | 30 | 25 | 28 | 71 | 34 | 36 | |
Pamplin College of Business | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University | Virginia, Blacksburg | NR | NR | |||||||
Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management | Claremont Graduate University | California, Claremont | NR | NR | |||||||
Rady School of Management | University of California, San Diego | California, San Diego | 69 | 60 | 82 | 59 | 65 | ||||
Rawls College of Business | Texas Tech University | Lubbock, Texas | 99-131 | 73 | |||||||
Robert H. Smith School of Business | University of Maryland, College Park | Maryland, College Park | 40 | 26 | 47 | 47 | 51 | 33 | 42 | ||
Ross School of Business | University of Michigan | Michigan, Ann Arbor | 10 | 17 | 10 | 11 | 14 | 20 | 10 | 27 | 8 |
Rutgers Business School | Rutgers University | New Jersey, New Brunswick and Newark | 58 | 62 | 50 | ||||||
Questrom School of Business | Boston University | Massachusetts, Boston | 50 | 50 | 39 | 44 | 36 | 71 | 48 | 67 | |
Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management | Cornell University | New York, Ithaca | 15 | 11 | 9 | 16 | 15 | 31 | 16 | 23 | 25 |
Sam M. Walton College of Business | University of Arkansas | Arkansas, Fayetteville | 87 | NR | 73 | ||||||
School of Business | College of Charleston | Charleston, SC | 99-131 | 91 | |||||||
Simon Business School | University of Rochester | New York, Rochester | 40 | 29 | 42 | 43 | 86 | 36 | 51 | ||
Smeal College of Business | Penn State University | Pennsylvania, University Park | 33 | 33 | 34 | 36 | 89 | 43 | 62 | ||
Stanford Graduate School of Business | Stanford University | California, Stanford | 2 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 7 | 13 | 1 |
Stern School of Business | New York University | New York, New York City | 12 | 13 | 20 | 12 | 16 | 19 | 24 | 11 | 10 |
Sykes School of Business | University of Tampa | Tampa, Florida | NR | 81 | |||||||
Tepper School of Business | Carnegie Mellon University | Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh | 17 | 15 | 17 | 19 | 22 | 33 | 18 | 30 | |
Haslam College of Business | University of Tennessee | Tennessee, Knoxville | 54 | 55 | 54 | 54 | 64 | ||||
Terry College of Business | University of Georgia | Georgia, Athens | 37 | 44 | 48 | 48 | 51 | 72 | |||
The George Washington University School of Business | George Washington University | Washington, D.C. | 61 | 51 | 78 | 40 | 81 | ||||
The Wharton School | University of Pennsylvania | Pennsylvania, Philadelphia | 1 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 5 | 10 | 1 |
Thunderbird School of Global Management | Arizona State University | Arizona, Glendale | NR | NR | 88 | ||||||
Tippie College of Business | University of Iowa | Iowa, Iowa City | NR | NR | 64 | 94 | 55 | 73 | |||
Trulaske College of Business | University of Missouri | Missouri, Columbia | 69 | 80 | 53 | 69 | 66 | ||||
Tuck School of Business | Dartmouth College | New Hampshire, Hanover | 12 | 2 | 5 | 8 | 8 | 22 | 14 | 3 | 24 |
UC Davis Graduate School of Management | University of California, Davis | California, Davis | 47 | 42 | 56 | 42 | |||||
UCLA Anderson School of Management | University of California, Los Angeles | California, Los Angeles | 16 | 12 | 16 | 15 | 17 | 34 | 13 | 9 | 9 |
University at Buffalo School of Management | The State University of New York at Buffalo | New York, Buffalo | 66 | 76 | 49 | 73 | 47 | ||||
University of Connecticut School of Business | University of Connecticut | Connecticut, Storrs | 79 | 59 | 65 | 96 | |||||
University of Louisville | University of Louisville | Kentucky, Louisville | 87 | NR | 86 | ||||||
University of Miami Business School | University of Miami | Florida, Coral Gables | NR | 72 | 55 | 57 | 57 | 97 | |||
University of Mississippi School of Business Administration | University of Mississippi | Mississippi, Oxford | 99-131 | 68 | 69 | ||||||
W. P. Carey School of Business | Arizona State University | Arizona, Tempe | 33 | 48 | 38 | 25 | 49 | 47 | |||
Warrington College of Business / Hough Graduate School of Business | University of Florida | Florida, Gainesville | 25 | 32 | 40 | 41 | 58 | ||||
Weatherhead School of Management | Case Western Reserve University | Ohio, Cleveland | 74 | 77 | 52 | 77 | 86 | ||||
Wisconsin School of Business | University of Wisconsin at Madison | Wisconsin, Madison | 35 | 37 | 35 | 48 | 68 | 46 | 57 | ||
Yale School of Management | Yale University | Connecticut, New Haven | 9 | 14 | 11 | 9 | 9 | 18 | 11 | 19 | 11 |
Zarb School of Business | Hofstra University | Hempstead, New York | NR | 89 | |||||||
Zicklin School of Business | CUNY Baruch College | New York, New York City | 52 | 71 | 57 |