U.S. News Best MBA Program in 2018: Chicago Booth

WHY YALE’S SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT FELL OUT OF THE TOP TEN

Regardless, Ross grads also landed their jobs far more quickly as well. Some 89.7% of the class at Michigan was employed by graduation, considerably better than Yale’s 75.2%, while 94.4% of Ross’ grads had jobs three months later, versus 90.5% at Yale. Those three metrics made all the difference,

Yale SOM had slightly better admission stats, with a higher average GMAT (727 vs. 716) and undergraduate grade point average (3.67 vs. 3.46). Yale’s acceptance rate also was lower at 17.4%, compared with 25.3% at Ross. But U.S. News’ puts slightly less emphasis on admissions metrics at 25% of the ranking, ten percentage points lower than pay and placement stats. Both schools received identical scores in U.S. News’ peer assessment and recruiter surveys, getting a 4.3 on a five-point scale from peers and a 4.2 from recruiters.

Though the U.S. News ranking fails to assess schools outside the U.S., it is arguably the most watched and followed of all the MBA rankings. The magazine puts a 2019 date on the ranking, even though it is coming out in 2018 and based on 2017 data. That’s largely because of the use of quantitative data on admissions and career outcomes. The methodology takes into account a wealth of proprietary and school-supplied data to crank out its annual ranking of the best full-time MBA programs. This year, U.S. News said it surveyed all 480 MBA programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International in the U.S. in fall 2017 and early 2018. A total of 387 responded. Of those, U.S. News placed numerical ranks on 99 schools, up to a rank of 95 for which five schools were tied.

The magazine does its own peer assessment survey of B-school deans and MBA directors (25% of the score). It also does its own survey of corporate recruiters (accounting for 15% of the overall ranking). U.S. News said it averaged the recruiter scores over the past three years for the ranking.

U.S. NEWS UPDATE TO ITS METHODOLOGY LIKELY IMPACTED THIRD-TIER SCHOOLS

Other metrics included in the ranking are starting salaries and bonuses (14%), employment rates at and three months after graduation (7% and 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 sixth year U.S. News included GRE scores in its ranking methodology.

U.S. News also tweaked its methodology for ranking MBA programs this year, a change that largely impacted third-tier schools further down on the list. In both the full-time MBA and part-time MBA program rankings, schools with less than 50% of their entering students with GMAT or GRE scores received “less credit” for those metrics in the rankings. U.S. News applied the same standard to undergraduate GPAs. The penalty imposed by U.S. News for falling below the 50% threshold was not disclosed.

“In measuring graduate schools nationwide, our ranking formulas evolve as more and more data becomes available,” explained Bob Morse, chief data strategist at U.S. News, in a statement. “From MBA programs to law schools, our aim is to take full advantage of data that are representative of incoming classes and to provide information, where available, on career placement success.”

THE TOP 25 BUSINESS SCHOOLS ON CORE METRICS

School	GMAT	GPA	Accept Rate	Pay	Jobs at Grad	Jobs Later
1. Harvard	731	3.71	9.9%	$158,049	78.9%	89.3%
1. Booth	730	3.61	23.5%	$151,085	88.0%	95.3%
3. Wharton	730	3.60	19.2%	$159,815	82.3%	92.6%
4. Stanford	737	3.74	5.7%	$159,815	63.9%	87.6%
5. MIT	722	3.57	11.6%	$148,5451	84.2%	93.9%
6. Kellogg	732	3.60	20.2%	$146,259	81.6%	92.6%
7. Haas	725	3.71	12.9%	$146,752	66.3%	89.9%
7. Michigan (Ross)	716	3.46	25.3%	$150,052	89.7%	94.4%
9. Columbia	727	3.60	14.0%	$151,849	76.0%	89.9%
10. Dartmouth (Tuck)	722	3.52	23.0%	$152,805	80.2%	91.8%
11. Duke (Fuqua)	702	3.50	22.4%	$147,857	87.0%	92.6%
11. Yale	727	3.67	17.4%	$137,155	75.2%	90.5%
13. NYU (Stern)	714	3.48	20.9%	$146,024	79.1%	91.3%
13. Virginia (Darden)	713	3.50	24.5%	$153,576	83.4%	90.1%
15. Cornell (Johnson)	700	3.36	29.9%	$152,207	80.3%	90.9%
16. UCLA (Anderson)	715	3.50	22.3%	$141,197	74.4%	88.0%
17. Carnegie Mellon (Tepper)	691	3.30	29.9%	$145,463	81.1%	88.6%
17. Texas-Austin (McCombs)	703	3.48	28.8%	$139,406	81.5%	89.9%
19. UNC (Kenan-Flagler)	701	3.38	37.2%	$131,469	79.1%	90.8%
20. Emory (Goizueta)	682	3.30	34.6%	$143,410	84.6%	92.7%
20. USC (Marshall)	703	3.48	29.1%	$135,812	74.9%	93.6%
22. Washington (Foster)	693	3.39	22.4%	$143,674	85.2%	98.1%
23. Rice (Jones)	711	3.34	27.2%	$131,821	83.0%	94.0%
23. Washington (Olin)	694	3.50	39.7%	$125,420	72.0%	97.2%
25. Georgetown (McDonough)	692	3.37	47.8%	$130,588	68.3%	91.8%

Source: Schools reporting to U.S. News & World Report. Pay equals average salary and bonus for the Class of 2017. Job stats are for accepted offers, not offers, at graduation and three months later.

(See the following pages for the full ranking and year-over-year changes)