Acceptance Rates At The Top Online MBA Programs Of 2022

The hardest online MBA program to get into in 2022 was also the overall top program in Poets&Quants‘ fifth annual OMBA ranking: USC Marshall. File photo

ONLINE MBAS: STILL THE FUTURE, MAYBE

Are online MBAs “the future” of graduate business education? Many believe so. Particularly at the elite programs, they tend to feature the same faculty as full-time, residential programs, the same curriculum, and the same (or similar) intensity of study.

But in several key measures they pale in comparison to their residential forebears. One of these is selectivity. The acceptance rates at the full-time MBA programs at the top 25 B-schools in the United States are much lower in most cases than their digital cousins. That’s still the case even when you look at the top 50 B-schools.

In the 2022 P&Q ranking, acceptance rate accounts for only 20% of the admissions portion, which is why USC Marshall was not the top school in that category. Indiana’s Kelley Direct MBA program was, thanks to solid (though not leading) scores in average undergraduate GPA of the most recent incoming class (30% weight), average years of work experience (30%), and average adjusted GMAT score (20%), in addition to its 35.7% acceptance rate, which was third among all ranked schools.

See our methodology for more details on how we collected and crunched the data.