Poets&Quants’ Most Popular Stories Of 2022

Ray Temnewo, an Emory undergrad, chose Stanford Graduate School of Business over Harvard and Wharton

A STANFORD-HARVARD-WHARTON ADMIT DESCRIBES HIS APPLICATION PROCESS

It was the second week of December and Ray Temnewo was beginning to worry. The Emory undergraduate and McKinsey alum had applied to the full-time MBA programs at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Harvard Business School, and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania — three of the toughest business schools in the world to get into — but he hadn’t yet heard from any of them.

Stories of acceptances — and rejections — were beginning to trickle in to Reddit and other websites where B-school applicants share stories. Temnewo exchanged texts and calls with friends who had also applied to grad school, and with family members who were almost as anxious for news as he was.

Then his phone rang. It was a San Francisco number. Stanford on the line?

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You know something is amiss when it’s a surprise that The Economist’s ranking of the world’s best MBA programs actually puts the Harvard Business School at the very top. Yet, in today’s 2022 Economist ranking, for the first time in the history of this ranking, HBS is No. 1.

A rankings laggard in recent years, Harvard just can’t seem to beat its peers. Even though the vast majority of MBA applicants would choose Harvard over any other school with the exception of Stanford, HBS has placed fifth in U.S. News and third in the Financial Times‘ rankings this year, third in Businessweek, fourth in Forbes, and fifth in Poets&Quants 2021-2022 composite list.

Even so, the top of this year’s Economist list represents something of a return to normalcy after 15 of the top 25 schools, including all of the super-elite M7 business schools, agreed to come back after a 2021 boycott due to the pandemic. Just behind Harvard this year is Wharton in second place, followed by Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management in third. while Columbia Business School and MIT Sloan School of Management round out the Top Five.

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MBA SALARIES & BONUSES AT THE TOP 25 BUSINESS SCHOOLS

Stanford Graduate School of Business Dean Jonathan Levin praised the adaptability and resilience of his school’s most recent graduating MBA class in January to mark the release of Stanford’s 2021 employment report. But the words Levin chose could apply to most of the MBAs from the top B-schools in the United States.

“More than other classes,” Levin said, “the Class of 2021 learned how to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty, and to be adaptable and resilient. We are thrilled to see how they are applying what they have learned, going on to incredible roles in numerous industries.”

A year removed from the deepest impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, Stanford was one of many success stories on the MBA employment front. It was certainly not alone. Most schools in the Poets&Quants top 25 reported stable or growing salaries, and every one of the 23 schools for which data is available reported jumps — sometimes dramatic — in both job offers and acceptances.

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