Kellogg SOM | Mr. Fertilizer Financier
GMAT 735 GMAT Focus, GPA 3.85
Harvard | Ms. Indian Engineer
GMAT 760, GPA 3.5
Wharton | Mr. Private Equity
GMAT 730, GPA 3.2
HEC Paris | Ms. M&A Lawyer
GMAT 700, GPA 3.5
Stanford GSB | Ms. UK In the USA
GMAT 720, GPA 1st class (UK scoring)
Kenan-Flagler | Mr. Do I Have A Shot?
GMAT EA: 151, GPA 3.1
Chicago Booth | Ms. Tech4Good
GMAT 760, GPA 3.76
Columbia | Mr. Underdog
GMAT 695 GMAT Focus (750 Legacy GMAT equivalent), GPA 2.85
McCombs School of Business | Mr. Big Pharma
GRE N/A, GPA 3.1
Kenan-Flagler | Mr. Non-Traditional Undergrad
GMAT 660, GPA 2.9
Kellogg SOM | Ms. Talent Acquisition
GRE 316, GPA 3.6
Ross | Mr. Tax Accountant
GMAT N/A, GPA 3.3
Tuck | Mr. Nothing Is Perma
GMAT 760, GPA 7/10
Kellogg SOM | Mr. Desi Product Manager
GMAT 740, GPA 2.90
Columbia | Mr. Clean
GMAT 770, GPA 3.1

Acceptance Rates & Yield At The Top 100 U.S. MBA Programs

by: Marc Ethier on April 17, 2024 | 3 Comments | 37,284 Views
Acceptance Rates At The Top 100 U.S. MBA Programs

Few can say no to Harvard Business School: For the second year in a row, HBS had the highest yield — the percentage of admits who actually enroll — at 87.2%

Yield is an important number for business schools but one they hate to advertise. It is simply the percentage of those offered admission who go on to enroll. Yield is a number that not even U.S. News reports, but it is easy to calculate: All you need to do is divide the class size by the number of admits. Even at schools like Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton, some applicants decide they have better prospects elsewhere and opt to decline — most likely to attend one of their rival schools.

A low yield means lots of declining is going on. In the P&Q top 10, the lowest yield in 2023 was at No. 8 Virginia Darden School of Business, at 31.5%; in 2022 NYU Stern School of Business was lowest in the top 10 at 33.7%. In the top 25, the lowest yield in 2023 was at No. 22 USC Marshall School of Business, 27.5%; Marshall, along with Emory Goizueta Business School, also was lowest in 2022, with each school reporting a yield of 28.9%.

The lowest yield in the top 50 in 2023 was at No. 41 Boston Questrom School of Business, at 27.4%. For Questrom, it was a big ding, down from 41.5% in 2022 — the second-biggest drop of the year. In 2022, the lowest yield in the top 50 was at Maryland Smith School of Business: 23.9%.

And in the top 100, the lowest yield in 2023 was at No. 93 Temple Fox School of Business: 13%. Five schools had yields below 20% last year. (See table below for yields through the years at 53 top B-schools, and see page 5 for yields at 100 schools.)

ONLY 11 SCHOOLS HAD YIELDS OVER 50%, DOWN FROM 15 SCHOOLS IN 2022

Harvard Business School had the highest yield in 2023, at 87.2%; HBS also had the best yield in 2022: 85.5%. In 2021, Stanford led all schools with a yield of 93.6%. In the lower 25 of the top 50, the biggest yield in 2023 was at No. 32 Brigham Young Marriott School of Business, at 81.1%; the next closest was No. 35 Arizona State Carey School of Business‘ 62.9%.

Overall, 11 schools had yields above 50% in 2023, down from 15 schools in 2022 and 20 schools in 2021. there were just 10 top-50 schools with yields over 50% in 2020, the worst year of the coronavirus pandemic for graduate business education — compare it to the 16 schools over 50% in 2019.

Similarly, six schools had yields over 60% in 2023, up from five in 2022 but down from nine in 2021. In 2020, during Covid-19, there were only five schools over 60%; in 2019 there were 10.

Five schools had yields over 70% in 2023, up from three, and four were over 80%, also up from three.

STANFORD HAS BEST YIELD OVER 4-YEAR PERIOD

The vast majority of schools in the P&Q top 50 saw their yields decline: 41 of 52 schools, including seven of the top 10. Yet that was an improvement from 2022, when 43 schools had declines. In 2021, 45 schools — including eight of the top 10 — had yield increases.

The biggest drop in 2023 was at No. 34 William & Mary Mason School of Business, which saw its yield decline more than 20 percentage points to 35%. In 2022 Minnesota Carlson School of Management had the biggest year-to-year drop, 15.1 points to 35.8%. Carlson was one of only two schools out of 52 to see double-digit yield increases in 2023: The No. 44 school jumped from 35.8% to 49.4%. No. 43 Texas A&M Mays Business School was the other, climbing from 33.7% to 47.9%. From 2021 to 2022, no schools had double-digit yield gains.

Across four years from 2020 to 2023, Stanford had the highest yield average at 84.7%. Only Harvard and BYU were above 80% in that span; a total of 14 schools were above 50%, six above 60%, and four above 70%.

YIELD AT THE TOP U.S. MBA PROGRAMS: 2020 TO 2023

P&Q 2024 Rank School Yield 2023 Yield 2022 Yield 2021 Yield 2020 4-Year Average*
1 Stanford GSB 82.7% 80.3% 93.6% 82.3% 84.7%
2 Harvard Business School 87.2% 85.5% 82.7% 65.6% 80.3%
3 Dartmouth (Tuck) 36.8% 37.6% 40.5% 37.4% 38.1%
4 Columbia Business School 56.2% 56.7% 64.8% 69.2% 61.7%
5 Yale SOM 33.5% 38.8% 38.2% 34.1% 36.2%
6 Duke (Fuqua) 52.8% 54.9% 61.8% 48.7% 54.6%
7 Cornell (Johnson) 37.0% 38.0% 49.0% 39.4% 40.9%
8 Virginia (Darden) 31.5% 34.1% 38.4% 38.1% 35.5%
9 Michigan (Ross) 33.2% 37.1% 49.3% 37.6% 39.3%
10 New York (Stern) 33.9% 33.7% 46.7% 29.9% 36.1%
11 Chicago (Booth) 48.2% 48.5% 54.4% 57.5% 52.2%
12 Northwestern (Kellogg) 36.8% 38.2% 42.2% 48.1% 41.3%
13 UCLA (Anderson) 33.6% 34.7% 40.5% 35.6% 36.1%
14 MIT (Sloan) 43.2% 51.5% 52.4% 34.7% 45.5%
15 UC-Berkeley (Haas) 36.6% 39.5% 43.0% 38.5% 39.4%
16 Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) 33.6% 29.4% 39.6% 24.6% 31.8%
17 Washington (Foster) 32.2% 34.2% 42.7% 32.0% 35.3%
18 Rice (Jones) 34.2% 38.1% 48.9% 49.3% 42.6%
19 Texas-Austin (McCombs) 33.7% 34.5% 36.1% 33.3% 34.4%
20 North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler) 32.6% 34.1% 44.7% 35.6% 36.8%
21 Vanderbilt (Owen) 28.3% 30.1% 35.7% 32.8% 31.7%
22 Southern California (Marshall) 27.5% 28.9% 39.3% 28.3% 31.0%
23 Emory (Goizueta) 28.9% 28.9% 34.0% 29.5% 30.3%
24 Georgetown (McDonough) 29.2% 31.8% 36.2% 29.2% 31.6%
25 Florida (Hough) 47.4% 55.8% 61.9% 54.1% 54.8%
26 Rochester (Simon) 34.0% 38.6% 39.7% 35.7% 37.0%
27 Georgia Institute of Technology (Scheller) 46.4% 47.8% 51.3% 36.1% 45.4%
28 Washington (Olin) 36.9% 49.7% 55.5% 40.2% 45.6%
29 Georgia (Terry) 50.0% 55.2% 48.4% 56.2% 52.5%
30 Notre Dame (Mendoza) 34.2% 41.9% 48.4% 43.2% 41.9%
31 Pennsylvania (Wharton) 57.0% 62.0% 67.0% 51.2% 59.3%
32 Brigham Young (Marriott) 81.1% 81.8% 84.4% 76.3% 80.9%
33 Texas-Dallas (Jindal) 42.2% 40.9% 48.2% 45.1% 44.1%
34 William & Mary (Mason) 35.0% 57.1% 68.6% 50.9% 52.9%
35 Arizona State (Carey) 62.9% 66.7% 57.4% 51.3% 59.6%
37 Indiana (Kelley) 30.2% 38.7% 42.4% 29.6% 35.2%
38 Michigan State (Broad) 47.4% 43.5% 43.9% 45.8% 45.2%
39 Maryland (Smith) 31.3% 23.9% 34.2% 34.1% 30.9%
40 UC-Irvine (Merage) 43.9% 53.2% 56.7% 44.2% 49.5%
41 Boston University (Questrom) 27.4% 41.5% 36.2% 30.6% 33.9%
42 George Washington 34.3% 37.6% NA NA 36.0%
43 Texas A&M (Mays) 47.9% 33.7% 56.1% 49.1% 46.7%
44 Minnesota (Carlson) 49.4% 35.8% 50.9% 40.2% 44.1%
46 Southern Methodist (Cox) 46.3% 44.6% 49.6% 41.3% 45.5%
49 Rutgers Business School 29.8% 39.5% 35.6% 32.4% 34.3%
50 Ohio State (Fisher) 38.3% 39.2% 48.8% 28.5% 38.7%
52 Pittsburgh (Katz) 29.0% 31.5% 45.3% 30.5% 34.1%
53 Wisconsin 51.9% 50.7% 54.8% 48.0% 51.4%
55 Utah (Eccles) 36.7% 53.6% 54.2% 48.1% 48.2%
62 Tennessee-Knoxville (Haslam) 77.8% 66.3% 53.1% 43.7% 60.2%
72 Alabama (Manderson) 85.5% 88.7% 48.2% NA 74.1%
73 University of Miami (Herbert) 40.3% 49.6% 57.3% NA 49.1%
*3- or 2-year average where data for four years in unavailable
Source: U.S. News & World Report data and P&Q analysis

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