U.S. News 2023 MBA Ranking Due April 18

As controversy over school rankings continues to climb, U.S. News is expected to publish its newest MBA ranking on April 18th, a three-week delay from last year’s release on March 29th. The new list will arrive after a rankings revolt by leading law and medical schools that has yet to spread to the business school community. But that public boycott led by the likes of Yale and Harvard may have led to the three-week delay in publication.

Despite the criticism, U.S. News remains, in the words of New York Times columnist Frank Bruni “the justly embattled but perversely enduring bible” for university reputations. That is especially true for its ranking of MBA programs which is the most closely followed of all the published lists, even though it is entirely U.S. centric without a single European or Asian business school.

If anything, the U.S. News list will assume even greater importance because of The Economist‘s decision last year to end all of its business school rankings and Forbes‘ failure to product a full-time MBA ranking for nearly four years. A new survey of thousands of business school aspirants by the Graduate Management Admission Council that will be published early next month again finds that prospective students worldwide rely heavily on rankings in their program selection process. The study found that published rankings and school websites were the top two factors in the decision making of individuals considering applying for graduate business degrees.

THE PUBLICATION OF U.S. NEWS MBA RANKING FOLLOWS A BOYCOTT BY SOME LAW SCHOOLS

After Yale and Harvard announced that their law schools would no longer participate in U.S. News rankings last November, several other elite law and medical schools followed suit. The boycott prompted U.S. News to alter its methodology for law schools, including a reduced emphasis on the peer assessment surveys of academics, lawyers and judges, and an increased weight on outcome measures.

While a business school revolt did not surface, several deans have recently gathered in two separate meetings at the University of Southern California and Emory University to discuss their concerns about rankings. The prevailing view of those sessions is that while full-time MBA programs represent a small fraction of the total student body at most business schools, there is a need for a more holistic ranking that reflects all the programs at a business school.

Gareth James, dean of Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, estimates that full-time MBA students make up little more than 3% of the overall business school students yet MBA rankings are more often than not widely considered the ranking for a business school. “But while it’s 3% of the market, it’s 97% of the reputation,” he says. “It’s a very strange environment to live in.”

BOOTH AND WHARTON TIED FOR FIRST IN LAST YEAR’S U.S. NEWS MBA RANKING

Last year, the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and the Wharton School nudged aside Stanford Graduate School of Business to claim top honors. Stanford slipped to a third-place finish in a tie with Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business. Harvard Business School remained in a fifth-place tie with MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Among last year’s Top 25 winners, two business schools stood out for their improved MBA rankings: Emory University’s Goizueta Business School rose five places to rank 21st, regaining Top 25 status from its showing in 26th place in 2021. Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame jumped 11 places to rank 25th from 36th. Outside the Top 25, Washington University’s Olin Business School in St. Louis gained seven spots to rank 29th, while the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business rose eight positions to place 47th.

The new U.S. News ranking will be based on reputation and statistical surveys conducted in the fall 2022 and early 2023 of each program in the six largest graduate school disciplines.

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