Ten Biggest Surprises In The 2023-2024 U.S. News MBA Ranking

7) Emory Goizueta Returns To The Top 20

It’s been a while. We’ve missed you. Welcome back.

Hopefully, you’ll stay a while.

It seems like forever since Emory Goizueta ranked among the 20-best with U.S. News. Actually, it last happened during the 2019 ranking…and 20th at that. Since then, Goizueta has experienced highs (21st last year) and lows (26th in 2022). This year, the school hit 17th. While you’ll find programs like Rice Jones, Georgia Tech Scheller and Texas-Dallas Jindal eking up 2-3 spots, they just don’t offer the narrative that Goizueta brings to the table.

Rankings don’t just happen. Schools don’t attract higher caliber students or gain more favorable impressions from employers by standing still. Make no mistake: Goizueta has been busy – real busy – in recent years.

Recognizing the increasing importance of DEI among employers, Goizueta launched a concentration in the area. The school doubled down in the area by launching a student-run investment fund that supports minority investors. Of course, everyone remembers the John Lewis Case Competition, which draws hundreds of MBA students to address social justice issues. At the same time, Goizueta is doubling the size of its Master’s in Business Analytics program, while launching a fully-online part-time MBA program.

Such investments create a virtuous cycle – and employers have noticed. This past year, new Goizueta grads attracted $178,976 in pay and bonus – a number that eclipses compensation for counterparts at UC Berkeley Haas, UCLA Anderson, and Texas McCombs. The pay also represents a major jump from the past two classes, who pulled down $158,576 and $151,922 respectively. To put it another way, Goizueta MBAs have seen their pay rise by $27,054 over the past two years. In context, this improvement represents a larger improvement than #1 Chicago Booth, whose grads experienced a $22,110 rise over the same period.

Along the same lines, recruiters gave Emory Goizueta a 3.7 average on their assessment scores this year, up from 3.5 last year. Over the same period, average GMAT rocketed from 692 to 710, while placement by graduation jumped from 88.2% to 94.3%. Most strikingly, the school’s acceptance rate fell 16 points to 37.1%. In addition, Goizueta ranked 3rd among Top 25 programs for three-month placement at 97.5% (a down year considering the school placed 99.1% of its grads within three months last year).

Here’s a number that really sticks out. In just two years, the average GMATs of Goizueta students have vaulted from 675 to 710. And average undergraduate GPAs have risen from 3.0 to 3.38 too.

Where does Goizueta take it next? That’s hard to say, but the fundamentals are strong and the momentum is clear. After all, the school has been rising in the Financial Times and Bloomberg Businessweek rankngs too. Maybe next year we’ll be talking about Emory Goizueta as the centerpiece of the South.

8) A Ranking Tied Up In Knots

There’s nothing worse than a tie. We’re conditioned for decisive endings, winners-and-losers. You don’t commit all the time, sweat, and sacrifice to be “as good as” – you want to know who is “better.“ 

Without that, why even try?

You could say the same thing about the U.S. News ranking. In the past, U.S. News rankings have been dogged by ties. Last year, there were four ties in the Top 10: #1 (Chicago Booth and Wharton School), #3 Northwestern Kellogg and Stanford GSB), #5 (Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan), and #8 (Columbia Business School and UC Berkeley Haas). Overall, there were 14 ties in the Top 50, including 4 schools bottlenecked at 29 and another 5 schools clogging up the 47th spot. The Year before? Well, the Top 4 was clearly differentiated, though there were still 15 ties in the Top 50, highlighted by a 6-school pileup at the 44th spot.

That’s a problem for U.S. News. Applicants seek out rankings because they are seeking either direction or validation. When aspirants are new to the process, they’re hoping to pick out schools that differentiate themselves through reputation or results. Later on, they are seeking affirmation that they are following the right path or making the right choice. A tie? It just kicks the can down the road, to borrow a cliché. It only reveals ranges, not hard-won decisions. 

This year, U.S. News tinkered with its weights, presumably in hopes of reducing ties. Peer and recruiter assessments now represent a combined 25% weight, down from 40%. That 15% difference was made up by increasing the weight of pay and placement to the same degree. However, U.S. News simply re-arranged when it needed to revamp. Their inability to dislodge all the ties is a symptom of the deeper rot in the ranking. 

This year, the U.S. News ranking features 15 ties, no different than the 2022 incarnation. That included schools snarled up at #6 (Stanford GSB and Dartmouth Tuck), #8 (Michigan Ross and Yale SOM), and #11 (Columbia Business School, Duke Fuqua, and UC Berkeley Haas). On the plus side, the largest jams involved just 3 schools – but it happened four times. 

Alas, the more things change, the more they stay the same. That means there is far more change needed on U.S. News’ end. Wisely, the outlet cut the weight of peer assessment in half, reducing the influence of deans and faculty who had little knowledge and limited awareness of their rivals’ day-to-day operations. In the end, U.S. News simply shifted it to pay and placement. Call it the rankings equivalent of an accounting trick – a half measure that does more to disguise than define. It also calls to mind a dictum often attributed to Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” 

In this case, the outcomes reveal the delusions. The repositioning didn’t work. It’s time for U.S. News to dig deeper. Or – to borrow a quote popular among sales managers – “Get busy, get better, or get out.” There’s a lot of work that needs to get done here.