Poets&Quants Top 50 MBA Programs Outside the U.S.

London Business School came in first among 50 of the best B-schools outside the U.S. in the new 2010 ranking by Poets&Quants. France’s INSEAD was second, followed by IMD in Switzerland, and then IESE and IE Business Schools in Spain.

This new P&Q list is a composite of four major MBA rankings published by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, The Economist, The Financial Times, and Forbes. The ranking takes into account a massive wealth of quantitative and qualitative data captured in the five major lists, from surveys of corporate recruiters, MBA graduates, deans and faculty publication records to median GPA and GMAT scores of entering students as well as the latest salary and employment statistics of the latest graduating class.

By blending these rankings using a system that takes into account each of their strengths as well as their flaws, we’ve come up with what is arguably the most authoritative ranking of MBA programs ever published. The list, which includes the recently released 2010 rankings by BusinessWeek and The Economist, tends to eliminate anomalies and other statistical distortions that often occur in one ranking or another. In any case, the ranking measures the overall quality and reputation of the flagship full-time MBA programs at the schools, rather than the schools themselves.

After the U.S., Europe remains the best place to get a business education. Of the top 20 non-U.S. B-schools, seven are based in Britain, including the relatively new MBA programs at No. 9 Cambridge and No. 11 Oxford universities, along with three each in Spain and in France. Only one Asian school, China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai, cracked the top 20 list at 17th.

The ranking underscores the fact that Europe’s business schools have been gaining significant ground in recent years. For the year ending June 30, 2010, for example, European schools received more than 85,000 GMAT scores, an increase of 90 percent, or about 40,000 score reports from five years prior. The total number of GMAT scores sent worldwide increased by only 30 percent over the same five-year period.

Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Spain remain the top European destinations, receiving about 80 percent of the GMAT scores sent. But schools in five other countries—Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, and Greece—each received more than 1,000 score reports from prospective students. A majority (64 percent) of the GMAT scores sent to European business schools came from non-European examinees, especially from Indian and Chinese citizens. In fact, Indian citizens outnumbered local talent in some countries and were the leading source of talent in 2010 for schools in Britain, France, Spain, and Switzerland. Just 37 percent of scores from European test takers were sent to business schools in the U.S., the first year the proportion fell below 40 percent. A decade ago, more than 60 percent of scores from European test takers went to U.S. schools.

Methodology: Schools on each of four major rankings–BusinessWeek, Forbes, The Financial Times, and The Economist– were scored from a high of 100 to a low of 1, the numerical rank of the 100^th school on any one list. Then, those sums were brought together.