Each year, U.S. News and World Report releases its business school rankings for US MBA programs.

The best graduate business schools can’t stop at conferring MBAs.

Top graduate business schools have to integrate real life scenarios into courses, build tomorrow’s leaders and improve your  chances of entering rewarding careers.

Each of these advantages has to be delivered at reasonable tuition rates.

Stanford GSB is #1

For the second year in a row, Stanford University’s graduate business school took the top spot.

U.S. News and World Report shares that the school has more than 20 concentrations and departments.

Among the 20 plus offerings are general management, finance, portfolio management, quantitative analysis and statistics, manufacturing and technology management and health care administration.

In addition, Stanford emphasizes focus areas like leadership, regardless of your concentration.

A downside at Stanford – and some other graduate business schools – is a lack of an online or part-time MBA program.

Although the tuition at Stanford’s MBA program is pricy at $61,875, the school has a 73.6% full-time career placement rate.

Top 5 Business Schools

Below are the top five business schools according to U.S. News and World Report’s 2016 B-School rankings.

Stanford University Graduate School of Business

Accepts 7.1% of applicants. Stanford’s graduate business school has a rolling admissions program.

More information about Stanford’s business school is covered earlier in this article.

Harvard University

Of all the graduate business schools, Harvard’s MBA program has one of the lowest acceptance rates.

Only 11% of applicants are accepted. Non-profit, management, marketing and entrepreneurship are leading specializations at the university.

By graduation, 76.9% of students enrolled are employed full-time.

University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business

Production and operations, information systems, executive MBA and management are among the university’s more popular MBA concentrations.

Acceptance rate at the school is 20.7%.

About 84.3% of Wharton’s graduate business majors are employed full-time by the time they earn their MBA.

University of Chicago

The Booth School of Business’ acceptance rate is 23.5%.

About 1,181 graduate business majors attend the school full-time. Leading specializations are accounting, management, finance, executive MBA and marketing.

The college has an 87.4% full-time career placement rate.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management

Sloan has a 13.8% acceptance rate.

Approximately 812 full-time students are enrolled in the MBA program.

Emphasis areas are entrepreneurship, accounting, management, information systems and marketing. The career placement rate is at 79.6%.

Conclusion

Clearly, MBA students enrolled at graduate business schools want options.

School administrators who want to attract the best students are also focusing on leadership and career placement in addition to offering a broad range of concentrations.

As you can imagine, admission processes at these schools are tough.

As few as two to three mistakes could knock you out of the running.

Learn how to avoid these and other MBA admissions mistakes to increase your chances of getting accepted into top graduate business schools.