A Tie for #1 in U.S. News’s 2019 MBA Rankings

 Once again, Harvard Business School is having to share the number one spot in U.S. News’s MBA rankings. This year, though, it’s sharing first place with University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business rather than Wharton.

 And that wasn’t the only tie in these closely contested rankings. Here are the schools with the top ten scores: 

– Harvard Business School
– University of Chicago Booth School of Business
– University of Pennsylvania Wharton School
– Stanford Graduate School of Business
– MIT Sloan School of Management
– Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management
– University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business
– University of Michigan Ross School of Business
– Columbia Business School
– Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business

Narrowly missing the top ten were Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and Yale School of Management, which tied for 11.

If all these ties are giving you a little deja-vu, that’s to be expected. Last year, Harvard and Wharton tied for first, with three different schools tying for fourth and two more for ninth.

This year, it’s Booth tied with Harvard, but the changes in the top ten are relatively minor. Nine of the top ten schools are the same as last year. The exception is Yale slipping out of the top ten and Ross rising to seventh. 

So where do these rankings come from? U.S. News’s methodology emphasizes three main factors: a given school’s reputation (worth 40 percent of its score), its track record of placing MBA grads in good jobs (35 percent) and its admissions selectivity (25 percent). 

The most important data point overall is a particular school’s “peer assessment score,” which tallies how other B-school deans rank the program. This survey accounts for 25 percent of a school’s overall score.

 Another important factor is how recruiters rate the program, which is the other component in evaluating a school’s reputation and accounts for 15 percent of the overall ranking.

 Also weighted fairly heavily are students’ average GMAT scores (16.25 percent) and graduates’ average starting salary (14 percent). For a complete overview, see U.S. News’s methodology web page.

 It’s up for debate whether the particulars of which school tied with which other school matter much. More generally, though, what’s clear is that all the schools that achieved top U.S. News rankings have strong MBA programs. 

Naturally, you might be wondering how you stack up with other applicants to these programs, and how you can submit an application that communicates why you’re a good fit for these kinds of programs. We can help you figure that out. Contact us for a free assessment!