Businessweek’s 2014 MBA Ranking Winners & Losers

The University of Iowa’s Tippie School of Management revamped their application to connect with candidates in their own space – social media

For every school that goes up, of course, there’s at least one that goes down. The MBA programs that dropped the most were the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business and Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business. Both schools plunged 22 places each to a rank of 75th and 73rd, respectively. Arizona State University’s Carey School and Boston University’s School of Management didn’t do much better. Their full-time MBA programs slumped 18 positions each to end up at ranks of 67 and 57.

The most shocking decline of all? The University of Virginia’s Darden School slumped 10 places to a rank of 20th from ten just two years ago. A fall of that magnitude for a highly prominent school is rare. It’s not clear what caused the drop, other than the change in methodology. In any case, some of the declines can not be explained at all. Though Northeastern fell 22 spots and Arizona State dropped 18 places, the underlying index scores for those schools changed hardly at all. When Northeastern ranked 51st two years ago, it’s index score was 42.16. This year it slipped by a mere 1.02 to 41.14, tripping that 22-place drop. Ditto for Arizona’s Carey School. It lost a minuscule .25 off its previous index score, 45.99 vs. this year’s 45.74, yet plunged 18 places.

For whatever reason, the big losers clearly outnumbered the big winners. Some 14 schools plummeted in double-digits, not including the two schools that disappeared completely from the list. Among the MBA programs taking deep dives were those at York University’s Schulich School of Business in Canada and Imperial College in Britain. York dropped 11 places in Businessweek‘s separate international ranking to end up at 13th–a long way down for a list that includes only 27 schools. Imperial College lost nine spots to finish 14th.

The Biggest Losers On Businessweek’s 2014 MBA Ranking

Source: P&Q analysis of Bloomberg Businessweek rankings

Then, there are the newcomers to the list. This year Businessweek published its largest ranking ever, increasing the number of MBA programs with numerical ranks to  85 U.S. schools, up from 63 two years ago, to 27 international schools, up from 19 in 2012. Among the newbies, the biggest winners are ESMT, the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin, Germany, which popped into a third place finish in the international ranking. The school, which was founded only 12 years ago, is now ahead of both No. 4 London Business School and No. 5 INSEAD.  Cambridge University’s Judge Business School also did especially well, gaining a rank of sixth place after being a no-show in 2012, while Cranfield University in Britain was right behind it, sliding in at a rank of seven.

The surprises among U.S. schools were less spectacular, though three schools that were not on the 2012 list managed to sneak their way into the top 50: Pittsburgh’s Katz School at 35, UT-Dallas at 41, and the University of Cincinnati’s Lindner College of Business at a rank of 47th.

DON’T MISS: DUKE TOPS BUSINESSWEEK’S 2014 MBA RANKING or HOW DUKE ACHIEVED ITS NO. 1 RANKING