P&Q’s Must Reads: Poets&Quants 2022-2023 MBA Ranking

Hello everyone  – Welcome back to Poets&Quants’ Must Reads, a quick, digestible recap of the top business school news, sponsored by CentreCourt, P&Q’s virtual admission events.

I’m your host, Kristy Bleizeffer, and I’ll be highlighting the most important P&Q stories you might have missed. So, let’s get to it. 

No. 1: Poets&Quants 2022-2023 MBA Ranking

Move over Stanford, there’s a new rival topping this year’s Poets&Quants MBA ranking of the best business schools in the U.S. For the third time in the past 12 years, the Wharton School’s full-time MBA experience wins top honors.

Wharton, which claimed the top prize in 2017 and in 2018 when the school’s MBA program tied with Harvard Business School, narrowly edged out the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Stanford slipped to third place, while Northwestern Kellogg and Harvard rounded out the top five MBA programs in the U.S. HBS, which has ranked first seven out of a dozen Poets&Quants MBA rankings, more than any other school, continued to languish in fifth place, exactly where it was last year.

You can see how all the top business schools ended up in our annual composite ranking – and which schools leaped upward and which schools fell way down – now on our homepage.

You can read all about the disruptive startups on our homepage. 

No. 2: P&Q’s MBA Admissions Director Of The Year

While we routinely highlight outstanding programs, professors, and deans at the end of each year, this is the first year Poets&Quants has picked an MBA admissions director to highlight in our annual look back on the year that was. 

This week, we look at the career of Blair Mannix, MBA admissions director at the Wharton School. She led the first team at an M7 business school to achieve gender parity in an MBA class, a feat she repeated the very next year. 

“I’m very humbled, very surprised, very grateful,” Mannix tells Poets&Quants. “But this is about the entire team. It’s about everybody at Wharton, from the Dean’s suite on down. This admissions team is made of the best people, and I’m just lucky to lead it.”

Read more about Mannix and the Wharton admissions process now, on our homepage.

 No. 3: P&Q’s Complete Admissions and Pay Collection Of 2022

For MBA applicants, answers to many questions about which programs to pursue lie in the data. GMAT scores tell you if your candidacy is even in the conversation for a particular school. Post-MBA pay and placement reveals the immediate return on your investment. Average cost and debt helps you gauge your tolerance for discomfort and risk.  More than that, data enables applicants to compare business schools side-by-side, so they can identify which programs stand out – and where.

So where do business schools – and employers – thrive? This year, Poets&Quants authored over 50 articles that provided reliable data to help MBA applicants choose business schools and employers that aligned with their ambitions, interests, and values. We’ve collected them all in this handy dive for the data-driven MBA hopeful. 

You can find it at poetsandquants.com

No. 4: Our Weekly Round Up of  News You Can Use

No matter where you are in your MBA journey, we bring several helpful stories for you this week.

First up: We’re getting the last of the 2022 jobs reports from some stragglers, and they’re showing some impressive employment outcomes for their MBAs. Johns Hopkins Carey Business MBAs posted a 25% increase in average base salary and nearly 30% increase in average signing bonus over last year’s class, while Columbia Business School reported average compensation of more than $200K. Find these and other employment reports in our news tab.

Next: For all the aspiring entrepreneurs looking for the right MBA program, we offer Pitchbook’s 2022 list of best university programs for startup founders. Read the full list and analysis in our news tab. 

Finally: Finally, if you’re elbows deep in the Round 2 countdown, don’t miss these five tips for focusing your efforts in the final weeks, as well as our last-minute application checklist.

And, that’s it for this week’s Must Reads recap. 

I also want to alert all the school seekers out there to CentreCourt’s upcoming MBA Festival, where you’ll get front-row seats to leaders of some of the top MBA programs. Our next event is February 7-8, and is the must-attend event for any serious MBA candidate. Register now for free.

Again, I’m Kristy Bleizeffer, and you can join me next week, right here, for a recap of what’s important in the world of business education. Thanks for listening and, as always, stay informed!