P&Q’s Must Reads: Harvard & Wharton Slump In New 2023 Businessweek 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: Harvard & Wharton Slump In New 2023 Businessweek MBA Ranking

For the fifth straight year, Stanford Graduate School of Business came out on top of the 2023 Bloomberg Businessweek MBA ranking published last week. 

But the more surprising news on this year’s list is the continued rankings slump for Harvard Business School and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, widely regarded as the two other business schools that form the triumvirate at the top of the business education pecking order.

Harvard sunk to sixth place, falling four spots from last year, while Wharton slid to eighth. It is HBS’ lowest ranking from Businessweek since 2014 and Wharton’s worst since 2021.

You can find the full ranking results on our homepage.

No. 2: Chicago Booth Returns To Top Of P&Q’s 2023 Executive MBA Ranking

After updating our methodology to reflect a changing rankings landscape, Poets&Quants For Execs has crowned a new winner for our 2023 composite ranking of the best EMBA programs in the United States: University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Chicago Booth shot up to No. 1 after finishing 30th in P&Q’s composite ranking of 2022 — a year when the school did not participate in two of the three rankings we used in our composite. This year, Booth participated in all three of them: It ranked No. 1 for U.S. EMBA programs in The Financial Times, No. 2 in Fortune and No. 3 in U.S. News & World Report.

You can find the full EMBA ranking in our news tab.

No. 3: The First Top-Ranked MBA To Enroll 50% Women Reports A Huge Decline In Women In 2023

Back in 2018, USC’s Marshall School of Business made history by becoming the first major business school in the United States to achieve gender parity in its full-time MBA program. It was a watershed moment, a dam-breaker that has pushed women closer each successive year to equal representation in graduate business education.

But five years later, USC is struggling to remain in the conversation, reporting a significant decline in women’s enrollment at the Marshall School: From 52% in 2018, Marshall’s ranks of MBA-seeking women have dropped to just 35% of the MBA Class of 2025 that enrolled this fall.

Learn more about the decline and get more Class of 2025 stats in our news tab.

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: Help! My Recommender Used ChatGPT. Strong recommendation letters are critical to your MBA application, so what do you do if you suspect your recommender took a shortcut? Find out in this story, now on our homepage.

Next: MIT’s App Is Different. How To Ace It. Find this story in our admissions tab and learn how to use every element of MIT Sloan’s application to align yourself with the kind of student they’re looking for.

Finally: Have A Question About Specialized Master’s Degree Programs? Ask Judith, Our Resident Expert. You’ll find this story, and other great admissions advice, in our admissions hub. 

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

I also want to alert school seekers to Centre Court’s upcoming MBA Festival. You’ll hear from alumni and career experts from leading business schools about how the MBA can fast-track your career. Our next event is Oct. 3-4, and you can 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!