How Recruiters Rank MBA Programs

The Top 20 Business Schools in 2014: Don’t Run a Stake Through Wharton Just Yet

Overall Rank & School	Recruiter Rank	Recruiter Score	Discrepancy
1. Stanford GSB	1	4.6	0
1. Harvard Business School	3	4.5	2
3. Pennsylvania (Wharton)	1	4.6	-2
4. MIT (Sloan)	4	4.4	0
4. Northwestern (Kellogg)	4	4.4	0
6. Chicago (Booth)	4	4.4	-2
7. UC-Berkeley (Haas)	8	4.1	1
8. Columbia	7	4.2	-1
9. Dartmouth (Tuck)	10	4.0	1
10. New York (Stern)	12	3.9	2
11. Duke (Fuqua)	10	4.0	-1
12. Virginia (Darden)	12	3.9	0
13. Yale	8	4.1	-5
14. Michigan (Ross)	12	3.9	-2
14. UCLA (Anderson)	16	3.8	2
16. Cornell (Johnson)	12	3.9	-4
17. Texas-Austin (McCombs)	16	3.8	-1
18. Emory (Goizueta)	22	3.4	4
19. Carnegie Mellon (Tepper)	20	3.6	1
20. UNC (Kenan-Flagler)	16	3.8	-4

Source: P&Q analysis based on U.S. News & World Report top 20 business schools in 2014 ranking

The biggest surprise: The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is ranked slightly higher than Harvard among recruiters who responded, with McKinsey and Bain being the top consumers of Wharton talent. Despite recent publicity that Wharton has fallen further behind Harvard and Stanford, recruiters still perceive Wharton as their equal. What’s more, Wharton landed its best class ever in terms of GMAT scores, including a larger percentage of women than either Stanford or Harvard. On the other hand, Chicago Booth, which ranked #1 on Bloomberg Businessweek’s most recent rankings, is actually #4 among recruiters, tied with MIT Sloan and crosstown-rival Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

The biggest “overperformers” on this list? NYU, UCLA, and Emory all had higher overall rankings than recruiter ratings. Goizueta, which ranks #18 over and #22 among recruiters, is particularly surprising, as it has climbed nine spots since 2010 and recently boasted the highest placement rate and biggest increase in reported salary of any business school in 2012. Among “underperformers, Yale, Cornell, and the University of North Carolina were each more highly regarded by recruiters than their overall rankings would indicate. In particular, Yale’s overall ranking may be tamped down by the higher percentage of students who enter lower-paying public sector jobs.