Financial Times’s 2017 Global MBA Ranking Is Out

Financial Times has released it’s 2018 Global MBA Ranking – which is good news for Stanford Graduate School of Business, this year’s first-place winner. Here are FT’s top ten MBA programs this year:

– Stanford Graduate School of Business
– INSEAD
– Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
– London Business School
– Harvard Business School
– Booth School of Business, University of Chicago
– Columbia Business School
– China Europe International Business School
– MIT Sloan School of Management
– Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley

In snatching the number one spot, Stanford GSB managed to dislodge INSEAD, which has grown comfortable in its place at the top of the FT rankings in recent years.

In an article exploring Stanford’s first-place finish, FT suggested that “the business school’s all-around success is closely linked with that of Silicon Valley.” Location certainly could help explain how it achieves an average alum salary of $214,742 three years after graduation, higher than its competitors.

Stanford wasn’t the only winner in this year’s ranking. Booth is up from ninth to sixth. Meanwhile, CEIBS and Haas have elbowed their way into the top ten, at eighth and tenth respectively.

The corresponding losers include University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School, which dropped from fifth to thirteenth and, even more dramatically, IE Business School, which disappeared from the ranking altogether – a first for a top-ten school.

FT’s methodology takes into account a range of factors, but none is more important than graduates’ earnings.

Twenty percent of a given school’s rank is determined by alums’ average salary three years after graduation, adjusted for purchasing power and stated in US dollars. A further 20 percent comes down to the percentage increase in alums’ salary from pre-MBA to post-MBA.

For first-place ranked Stanford, this figure was 114 percent, and for number two INSEAD it was 105 percent. Among the top ten programs, CEIBS had the highest average percentage increase – 168 percent.

Besides grads’ salaries, faculty research is also important. Ten percent of a school’s rank is determined by its faculty’s publications.

Another one of the more important factors in FT’s methodology (though nowhere near as important as alumni earnings) is international mobility. According to FT, IMD had the most internationally mobile alums this year despite being ranked 24th overall.

From there, FT considers a slew of other criteria, ranging from a value for money to gender representation. For more information, see FT’s methodology page and the full ranking.

MBA rankings can sometimes seem like a little bit of information overload – after all, there are 100 quite different schools in the FT ranking, so how d’you know which ones are right for you?

We can help. Ask us for a free assessment, and we’ll tell you not only what schools line up well with your profile but also how adcoms will view your application and how to maximize your chances of admission!