Ten Surprises In U.S. News’ MBA Ranking

4. How Can Stanford’s Graduate School of Business Be Behind Both Booth & Wharton?

With an acceptance rate of 5.9%, with the highest average GMAT scores for an incoming class along with the highest undergraduate GPAs, Stanford would seem to have a big advantage in U.S. News‘ ranking. Yet once again the school managed no better than a fourth-place finish, behind arch-rival HBS but also Booth and Wharton. While that outcome is somewhat puzzling, the reason for it lies in the school’s lackluster job placement numbers.

Only 63.9% of Stanford’s MBAs had jobs at graduation last year, the lowest level of employment for any top-30 business school. Three months after commencement, fewer than 90% of Stanford MBAs were employed at 87.6%, lower than any other top 25 school. U.S. News interprets those stats in the most negative sense, assuming that Stanford grads are having trouble finding jobs with their MBA degrees.

In truth, the degree is so valuable and the school’s graduates are so self-confident that they routinely search for the perfect post-MBA job. For many Stanford grads that means an independent search for a job with an early stage company or startup that doesn’t recruit many MBAs. Those searches don’t fall neatly into a recruitment calendar to satisfy U.S. News’ job metrics. The result? Those low placement scores pretty much cancel out the highest average GMAT for any prestige MBA program (737), the highest undergraduate GPA (3.74) and the lowest acceptance rate.

5. Southern California’s Marshall School Makes The Top 20

Only two years ago, the full-time MBA program at USC’s Marshall School of Business was ranked 31st by U.S. News. Last year it climbed to 24th, and this year it cracked the top 20 by placing 20th on the 2019 list. That is a jump of 11 places in the past two years alone. It’s certainly doing something right.

The school improved on almost all of U.S. News‘ key metrics. The average GMAT score for last fall’s incoming class rose 11 points to a record 703 from 692. The average GPA for the class increased to 3.48 from 3.37. The acceptance rate for applicants to its MBA program fell to 29.1% from 33.3% a year earlier. And last year’s MBA graduates had average salary and bonus of $135,812, up nicely from the $126,934 of a year earlier. What’s more, a higher percentage of the class were employed three months after graduation: 93.6% last year from 91.5% the previous year.

Those improvements helped USC claim its Top 20 status.

6. Biggest Jump For A Top 25 School? Rice University’s Jones School of Business

While USC did impressively well this year, so did Rice University’s Jones School of Business. Jones rose six places —most of any school in the top 25 — to claim a rank of 23rd. That is the best the school has ever done on the U.S. News survey. Just three years ago, in 2015, Jones placed 33rd best for its full-time MBA program.

The incoming class’ 711 GMAT average vaults Jones ahead of established powers like the London Business School and Duke Fuqua in the race for talent. Rice even came within two points of Virginia Darden – an academic powerhouse and former home of Dean Peter Rodriguez. Long regarded as one of the best-kept secrets in the MBA ranks, Jones’ strengths have traditionally centered on academic rigor, individual attention, and entrepreneurial prowess. Now, the school is itching to step up in weight class – and possesses the vision, leadership, and resources to do just that.

“We could be the highest touch, most intimate, highly selective program in the country,” Rodriguez argues. “We think that we could easily be Top 15 in terms of the level of talent and our selectivity, but at a scale that may be only half of our peer set. … That combination is where we find our sweet spot. Part of what we wanted to do was to be more deliberate in our strategy to be highly selective and assemble a group of 120 full-time students who could go just about anywhere and could certainly go to Top 10 schools.”

7. Biggest Plunge? NC State’s Poole College of Management

What’s worse than dropping off the U.S. News list entirely? How about falling 35 places in a single year? That dubious distinction goes to North Carolina State University’s Poole College of Management. It was the biggest drop for any business school this year, plunging NC State’s full-time MBA program to a rank of 92nd from 57th only a year ago.

How much really changed at the school to cause such a drastic fall? Not much, to tell the truth. The drop may well say more about U.S. News‘ methodology than it does about the MBA program at Poole. It should remind readers that many of these second- and third-tier schools are closely clustered together because the methodology can’t differentiate them from each other. So small and relatively insignificant changes can have a big impact.