Wharton | Mr. Private Equity
GMAT 730, GPA 3.2
HEC Paris | Ms. M&A Lawyer
GMAT 700, GPA 3.5
Stanford GSB | Ms. UK In the USA
GMAT 720, GPA 1st class (UK scoring)
Kenan-Flagler | Mr. Do I Have A Shot?
GMAT EA: 151, GPA 3.1
Chicago Booth | Ms. Tech4Good
GMAT 760, GPA 3.76
Columbia | Mr. Underdog
GMAT 695 GMAT Focus (750 Legacy GMAT equivalent), GPA 2.85
McCombs School of Business | Mr. Big Pharma
GRE N/A, GPA 3.1
Kenan-Flagler | Mr. Non-Traditional Undergrad
GMAT 660, GPA 2.9
Kellogg SOM | Ms. Talent Acquisition
GRE 316, GPA 3.6
Ross | Mr. Tax Accountant
GMAT N/A, GPA 3.3
Tuck | Mr. Nothing Is Perma
GMAT 760, GPA 7/10
Kellogg SOM | Mr. Desi Product Manager
GMAT 740, GPA 2.90
Columbia | Mr. Clean
GMAT 770, GPA 3.1
Harvard | Mr. Travel Enthusiast
GRE 333, GPA 2.7
Chicago Booth | Mr. UK-Big 4
GMAT 740, GPA 2:2 (UK Scoring)

Our MBA Ranking of the Top 50 Business Schools in the U.S.

by: John A. Byrne on August 05, 2010 | | 80,326 Views

Also, don’t assume that if one school has an index number twice as large as another that it is twice as good. It may be, or it may not be. The difference between No. 1 Harvard, which tops the index at 100, and No. 20 Indiana University, which has an index number of 47.9, is obviously far greater than two-to-one.

One other note: this ranking does not include the recent 2010 update by The Economist which published its latest list after we crunched our data. Instead, we used the 2009 Economist survey. Even though there were many wild swings among the ranked schools in latest The Economist list, it would have little effect on our ranking because only 10% of it is based on The Economist findings. Our list will be updated again shortly after BusinessWeek publishes its 2010 MBA ranking on Nov. 11. At that time, we’ll update add the biennial BW ranking and the annual Economist ranking.

P&Q Rank & School Index BW Forbes News FT Econ
1. Harvard Business School 100.0 2 3 1 3 5
2. Stanford School of Business 97.8 6 1 1 4 7
3. Chicago (Booth) 96.8 1 4 5 9 4
4. Pennsylvania (Wharton) 95.6 4 5 5 2 9
5. Dartmouth College (Tuck) 89.0 12 2 7 14 6
6. Columbia University 88.0 7 6 9 6 20
7. Northwestern (Kellogg) 87.5 3 8 4 22 15
8. MIT (Sloan) 84.9 9 14 3 8 19
9. California-Berkeley (Haas) 80.0 10 12 7 28 3
10. New York (Stern) 77.9 13 17 9 13 13
11. Duke (Fuqua) 75.9 8 13 14 20 28
12. Michigan (Ross) 73.9 5 18 12 28 25
13. Virginia (Darden) 70.5 16 9 13 31 24
14. Cornell (Johnson) 69.7 11 7 18 36 32
15. Yale School of Management 69.0 24 10 11 16 27
16. California-L.A. (Anderson) 60.1 14 19 15 33 50
17. Carnegie-Mellon University 57.2 19 23 16 34 33
18. North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler) 55.5 17 15 21 46 39
19. Texas-Austin (McCombs) 53.9 21 11 16 52 49
20. Indiana-Bloomington (Kelley) 47.9 15 25 23 57 46
21. Emory (Goizueta) 46.5 23 22 27 34 52
22. Brigham Young (Marriott) 44.6 22 16 33 83 NR
23. Southern California (Marshall) 41.8 25 32 20 57 36
24. Georgetown (McDonough) 40.9 NR 31 24 38 48
25. Notre Dame (Mendoza) 37.5 20 38 31 71 34
26. Washington U. (Olin) 33.0 28 41 19 50 65
27. Maryland-College Park (Smith) 31.8 26 29 45 43 51
28. U. Washington (Foster) 31.7 27 40 33 78 31
29. Southern Methodist (Cox) 30.8 18 33 49 96 88
30. Vanderbilt (Owen) 29.6 30 30 36 57 64
31. Minnesota (Carlson) 28.4 ST 26 24 75 62
32. Georgia Institute of Technology 27.2 29 44 26 NR NR
33. University of Iowa (Tippie) 24.3 ST 20 42 64 61
34. Ohio State (Fisher) 24.2 ST 39 21 67 45
35. Michigan State (Broad) 22.3 ST 21 46 65 NR
36. Rochester (Simon) 22.0 ST 37 27 48 NR
37. Texas A&M (Mays) 21.0 NR 24 33 54 NR
38. Univ. of Connecticut (Storrs) 17.4 ST 27 79 NR NR
39. Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison 17.1 NR 35 27 67 54
40. Boston University 16.3 ST 61 31 61 40
41. Purdue (Krannert) 13.9 ST 45 36 54 NR
42. Arizona State (Carey) 13.8 ST 56 27 89 NR
43. Penn State (Smeal) 12.9 NR 28 48 NR 58
44. Univ. of California-Irvine 10.7 ST 58 36 72 NR
45. Wake Forest (Babcock) 10.6 NR 34 46 NR 77
46. Rice University (Jones) 10.4 NR 47 39 44 77
47. Boston College (Carroll) 8.4 NR 46 39 47 NR
48. Illinois–Urbana Champaign 8.3 ST 63 42 52 87
49. Babson College (Olin) 4.6 ST NR 54 99 NR
50. George Washington Univ. 4.3 ST 73 55 57 NR

Footnotes:

NR – Not ranked. Because the Financial Times and The Economist include many non-U.S. schools in their rankings, a larger number of very good MBA programs at U.S. schools remain unranked by those two publications.

ST – Second tier. BusinessWeek ranks the top 30 business schools and then identifies a group of 15 more schools in an unranked “second tier.”

Methodology: Schools on each of the five major rankings were scored from a high of 50 to a low of 1, the numerical rank of the 50th school on any one list. Then, those sums were brought together, weighting the BusinessWeek ranking 30%, the Forbes ranking 25%, the U.S. News & World Report rankings 20%, the Financial Times rankings 15%, and The Economist ranking 10%. These differing weights reflect the authority and credibility we believe each of these rankings have in the business school universe. For a deeper explanation of the strengths and weaknesses of each system, see how we think the most influential rankings stack up against each other. To be included in the Poets&Quants analysis, each school had to receive a ranking from at least three of these most influential lists of the best full-time MBA programs.

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