Ten Biggest Surprises In Businessweek’s 2023-2024 MBA Ranking

9) Texas and Georgia: The New Centers of The MBA Universe

In Massachusetts, Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan are separated by a 10-minute car ride. New York features Columbia and NYU Stern on the same island – and Cornell Tech across the Queensboro Bridge. Head to Chicago and you’ll find Chicago Booth just down the freeway from Northwestern Kellogg. Out west, California boasts Stanford GSB and UC Berkeley Haas just an hour apart– with UCLA Anderson and USC Marshall packed even closer together.

These are large programs, highly ranked and deep-pocketed, all clustered together. For most, at least state-side, Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, and California are the places to head for an elite business education. Based on the Bloomberg Businessweek, two red states are increasingly competing against their blue state counterparts. Georgia and Texas are on the rise. In the coming years, they could enter the conversation as one of the best states to earn an MBA – if they don’t belong in it already.

Let’s start with Georgia, which now includes three full-time MBA programs in Bloomberg Businessweek’s top 30: Emory Goizueta, Georgia Tech Scheller, and the University of Georgia’s Terry College. Over the past five years, Goizueta has made a slow and steady climb up the ranking, moving from 24th to 16th – including rising one spot in 2023. Goizueta has been long known for its mix of southern hospitality and small-school intimacy. However, in terms of its index, Goizueta’s improvement has been fueled by improvements in Compensation (+2.1), Networking (+1.7), and Diversity (+8.3). Over the past two years, the program has experienced market improvements in Learning (+12.6) and Entrepreneurship (+23.6).

Georgia Tech’s Scheller College placed 20th in 2023. While Scheller lost two spots, it shows the school’s improvement hasn’t been a fluke considering it ranked 29th just two years ago. Located at the entrance of Atlanta’s famed Tech Square and home to one of the world’s top career centers, Scheller posted higher index scores in every dimension except Diversity. Even more, it has followed the Goizueta blueprint by notching significant improvements in Learning, and Entrepreneurship, where its scores have jumped by 33.5- and 25.5-points respectively.

However, the real highlight centers on Georgia’s flagship university. Five years ago, Terry College ranked 51st in the country according to Bloomberg Businessweek. Fast forward to now and Terry has elevated itself to 27th, up six spots from the previous year.  In the past year alone, Terry has boosted its Diversity score from 55.4 to 73.6. Over the past two years, the school has more than doubled its Learning score to 86.7 among student and alumni survey-takers.

Atlanta’s Fortune 500 presence and Georgia’s business-friendly climate provide a major advantage to MBAs. However, there is a drawback to these three programs: scale. Combined, Goizueta, Scheller, and Terry accounted for 258 first-year MBAs in 2022. That’s roughly equivalent to the class sizes at either Georgetown’s McDonough School or UC Berkeley’s Haas School – and less than a third of the Wharton School’s first-year size. In other words, Georgia’s premier business schools produce impressive graduates but lack the size to make a deep impact.

Everything is bigger in Texas – and that includes the number of business schools making a dent in the Bloomberg Businessweek ranking. Like Georgia, Texas has placed three programs in the top 30. Rice University’s Jones Graduate School headlines the list at 19th, followed by the University of Texas’ McCombs School (21st) and Southern Methodist University’s Cox School (27th). The big difference between Texas and Georgia? Texas offers a far deeper MBA bench. In the top 50, you’ll also find the University of Texas-Dallas’ Jindal School (37th), Texas Christian University’s Neeley School (42nd), Texas A&M’s Mays Business School (45th), and Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business (50th).

And just 1.6 points behind Hankamer is the University of Houston’s Bauer College at 55th. As far as scale goes, the University of Texas McCombs School enrolled 220 first-years alone last year. Advantage: Texas…particularly when you factor in the combined economic might of Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio into the equation.

The school to watch in the Lone Star State? Look no further than the metroplex’s SMU Cox. It moved up 13 spots in 2023, buoyed by a 3.5-point increase in Compensation – and a 25.6-point jump in Diversity.

Alas, Texas isn’t the only state with a deep bench. Beyond NYU Stern and Columbia Business School, New York can also tout Cornell Johnson (13th), Rochester Simon (25th), Baruch Zicklin (48th), Fordham Gabelli (55th), Syracuse Whitman (61st), SUNY Buffalo (69th), and the Rochester Institute of Technology Saunders (75th). Considering Rutgers’ proximity to the Big Apple, you could probably throw this 44th-ranked program into the New York mix too. When it comes to California, Bloomberg Businessweek also ranks UC Davis (43rd) and UC San Diego Rady (55th) – and that doesn’t count unranked powerhouses like UC Irvine Merage, San Diego Knauss, and Pepperdine University. Of course, you can’t forget Massachusetts institutions like Boston College Carroll (47th), Boston University Questrom (51st), and Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim (65th) – or unranked Babson College for that matter. Even the Beltway features five solid options: Georgetown McDonough (24th), University of Maryland Smith (33rd), Howard University (40th), George Washington University (46th), and American University Kogod (62nd).

In other words, large population centers produce top business schools – with one exception. Despite enjoying the third-largest population in the United States, Florida managed to place just one school in Bloomberg Businessweek’s 2023 MBA ranking – the University of Florida’s Warrington College at 38th.  Mind you, the University of Miami’s Herbert School and Florida International’s Chapman Graduate School later appear at 58th and 73rd. In the end, this low concentration represents either a sorry failure – or a major opportunity in the Sunshine State.

10) The Ranking’s Double-Digit Gainers

Regardless of what you think about this ranking, a double-digit gain gives a school bragging rights of a sort. Some schools issue new releases that trumpet their gains; others simply note them on their websites.The single biggest winner was the Rady School of Management at the University of California at San Diego. The school’s full-time MBA program zoomed up 17 places to finish 53rd, a vast improvement from its year-earlier and of 70. The Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College advanced 16 places to rank 48th, and Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business rose 15 spots to place 50th (see table below).

MBA Programs With Double-Digit Year-Over-Year Gains

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