U.S. News’ 2015 Ranking Of The Best MBA Programs

Harvard Business School

Harvard Business School

How The Top Ten Schools Performed On U.S. News’ Peer & Recruiter Surveys

School 2015 Peer 2015 Recruiter 2014 Peer 2014 Recruiter
  1. Stanford 4.8 4.6 4.8 4.6
  2. Harvard 4.8 4.6 4.8 4.6
  3. Wharton 4.7 4.5 4.8 4.6
  4. Booth 4.7 4.4 4.8 4.4
  5. MIT 4.7 4.5 4.7 4.5
  6. Kellogg 4.6 4.4 4.7 4.4
  7. Haas 4.5 4.3 4.6 4.2
  8. Columbia 4.4 4.2 4.4 4.3
  9. Tuck 4.2 4.0 4.3 4.0
10. Darden 4.2 4.0 NA NA

Source: U.S. News & World Report MBA Rankings

TEXAS A&M MOVED UP TEN SPOTS TO A TIE WITH MINNESOTA’S CARLSON AT 27TH

The more substantial ups and downs in the annual survey occurred further down in the ranking. Texas A&M, for example, moved up ten places this year to rank 27th in a tie with Carlson. Ironically, Wake Forest University’s School of Business, which announced last October that it would exit the full-time MBA market, rose 13 places to finish in 45th place.

All told, 24 of the 100 schools on the ranking moved in double-digits, including seven schools that had not been ranked last year by U.S. News. The single biggest moving school was the University of Louisville, with its tiny full-time MBA program of just 47 students. Louisville had to move at least 31 places to place 70th this year, from its unranked position in 2014. The school making the deepest plunge but still staying on the list tumbled 21 spots from 58 to 79: the University of Missouri’s Trulsake College of Business. Pepperdine University’s Graziadio Business School fell completely off the list, plunging least 25 positions from last year’s rank of 76. It was the single biggest decline of all.

The reason there are bigger movements in rankings further down is because measured differences among school programs tend to be less meaningful and the underlying index scores are closer. Indeed, as is often the case in the U.S. News rankings, many schools were tied for different numerical ranks, including seven MBA programs that were all ranked 63rd by the magazine. Unlike some ranking organizations, U.S. News makes a school’s index score public so readers can tell just how close together these programs are–and just about all of them are separated from each other by no more than a single point.

A RANKING THAT WILL CAUSE MUCH CONTROVERSY AND DEBATE AS ALWAYS

Like all rankings of business schools, the U.S. News list often engenders much controversy and debate. Detractors particularly take aim at the magazine’s survey of deans whose opinions, critics say, merely reflect the previous year’s ranking. Observers also criticize the ranking because small changes in some of the metrics can have an outsized impact on an MBA program’s status.

But the U.S. News list is among the most influential and most followed of several prominent rankings. The magazine only ranks U.S.-based schools, unlike Bloomberg Businessweek, The Financial Times, or The Economist which publish global rankings, either combined or separate.  And the results can differ markedly from other rankings. Duke University’s Fuqua School, ranked first by Bloomberg Businessweek last year, placed 13th on this list, one position better than the previous year. (One other note: As a marketing ploy, U.S. News claims this is a 2016 ranking to give it greater shelf life. It is based on 2014 data and released in 2015 which is why we label it a 2015 ranking.)

U.S. News’ methodology takes into account a wealth of proprietary and school-supplied data to crank out its annual ranking of the best business schools. The magazine does its own survey of B-school deans and MBA directors (25% of the score). This year, U.S. News said about 40% of those surveyed responded, but it did not reveal how many deans were actually surveyed or how many replied. It also does its own survey of corporate recruiters (accounting for 15% of the overall ranking). The magazine did not disclose its response rate for the recruiter survey. Last year 18% of those surveyed responded. U.S. News said it averaged the recruiter scores over the past three years for this ranking.

NUMERICAL RANKS WERE GIVEN TO 100 SCHOOLS THIS YEAR

Other metrics included in the ranking are starting salaries and bonuses (14%), employment rates at and three months after graduation (7% to 14%, respectively), student GMATs and GREs scores (about 16%), undergrad GPAs (about 8%), and the percentage of applicants who are accepted to a school (a little over 1%). This is the third year U.S. News included GRE scores in its ranking methodology.

This year U.S. News assigned numerical ranks to 100 schools, ending the list with a half dozen schools all tied for 95th place. As many as a dozen MBA programs fell completely out of the ranking, including the University of Delaware, which was ranked 80th last year, Claremont Graduate University’s Drucker School of Management and Bentley University’s McCallum Graduate School of Business.

(See following pages for the full ranking)

DON’T MISS: U.S. NEWS’ BIG WINNERS & LOSERS OF 2015