2025 Fortune MBA Ranking: It’s Harvard Again!

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz popularly branded his Republican opponents “weird.” That’s an appropriate comment to be made about today’s fourth annual MBA ranking from Fortune.

MBA programs that have never landed on any other ranking oddly pop up here, including in the Top 50 such schools as King University, a Presbyterian-affiliated private university in Tennessee (ranked 48th) and San Jose University (ranked 47). Also highly ranked by Fortune are Indiana State (60), and Southern Mississippi (61), both unranked by U.S. News.

Schools that have long been in the Top 25 have either fallen off the Fortune ranking entirely or features ranks well below their historic rankings. Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, ranked 23rd last year, isn’t on this list. Neither are Rochester Simon, previously ranked 29th, Michigan State (31), or Babson College (50). UNC’s Kenan-Flagler and Indiana’s Kelley School of Business, almost always Top 25 schools, are ranked 26th and 34th, respectively.

Some 38% of the 72 returning schools on this list experienced double-digit increases or declines year-over-year when there was little if any change in their full-time MBA programs.

WEIRD: THE FORTUNE 2024 MBA RANKING

The churn from last year’s list is unprecedented for any ranking, with 26 of the 98 programs having been unranked by Fortune in 2023.

No less worrisome, more schools are figuring out how to play the rankings game, elbowing their way onto this list when they could never make more legitimate rankings published by U.S. News or The Financial Times. Many of them are even ahead of long-established and more credible MBA programs at such places as Rutgers Business School, which is ranked 62nd this year. Some schools, such as the University of Texas Permian Basin, put precious few MBAs into the market. Just 20 for the Basin school.

Weird.

FORTUNE MBA RANKING: HARVARD TAKES FIRST FOR THE FOURTH TIME

Yet, a cursory look at the top might well allow users to give this list far more credence than it deserves.

For the fourth consecutive time, for example, Harvard Business School can claim first place in what is Fortune’s fourth annual MBA ranking. Chicago Booth, Northwestern Kellogg, Wharton, and Columbia Business School round out the top five. Stanford, which ranked second last year, fell to sixth place. UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, which did poorly last year in the Fortune ranking, did even worse this year, dropping another two places to rank 16th.

There will be celebrations at Washington University’s Olin Business School, up 18 places from last year to rank 21st, and Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business, climbing nine spots to place 19th. There will be sighs, if not moans, at Yale School of Management, sliding 11 places to rank 15th, and UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, falling seven spots to rank 23rd.

The ups and downs in this ranking are roller-coaster-like (see tables below). The MBA programs at Baruch College in New York and the University of San Diego both plunged 29 places from last year to 71st and 87th, respectively. The University of Denver saw its full-time MBA lose 28 spots to rank 83rd, while Rutgers Business School and Bentley University’s Business School both fell 24 places to rank 62nd and 89th, respectively.

Besides the 18-place gain experienced by Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Tennessee saw its MBA program jump 16 places on the Fortune list to 36, while Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst advanced 13 spots to 30th and 41st, respectively.

HOW FORTUNE SUBSTANTIALLY CHANGED ITS MBA RANKING  

As one might expect, any ranking is largely based on how it is put together by the organization that is publishing it. The Fortune list is among the absolute worst MBA rankings on the planet based on Poets&Quant’s own analysis of the magazine’s methodology. Perhaps in response to the criticism over its rankings approach, Fortune reengineered the way it compiles its list.

This year, Fortune changed its methodology (see chart below) to include such things as the average undergraduate GPA of newly admitted students (3%), median class GMAT scores (7%), acceptance rates (5%), yield (3%), retention (5%) and graduation (10%) rates, out-of-state tuition (5%), Fortune’s previous ranking (2%), placement rate (15%), median base salary (25%), and a Fortune 1000 score (20%) for schools that have more alums in C-Suite positions at Fortune 1000 companies.

This is a substantial change in the way Fortune ranks MBA programs. Previously, 65% of the ranking had been based on pay and placement. Now it’s 40%. These metrics are a year old, even though schools will begin to report fresh data for the Class of 2024 over the next couple of months. Fortune used to put a 25% weight on what it called a “brand survey” based on interviews with “thousands of business professionals and hiring managers.” That part of the puzzle has been completely abandoned. Fortune then doubled the weight to 20% from 10% placed on its count of each school’s MBA alumni who are C-suite executives at Fortune 1000 companies.

FORTUNE SPOKE WITH TWO PEOPLE ABOUT ITS RANKING

Fortune suggests the changes were informed by conversations with just two people: An MBA admissions consultant, David White of Menlo Coaching, and the newly named CEO of AACSB International, the accreditation agency for business schools, Lily Bi. “By asking questions about the differences between the traditional, full-time MBA and other formats, curriculum, and student outcomes, we hoped to gain a better understanding of how to guide those seeking the degree,” according to Fortune. “It’s noteworthy that neither expert was directly involved in ranking any programs.”

Weird.

Schools With That Sinking Feeling Thanks To Fortune

School	Y-O-Y Decline	2024 Rank	2023 Rank
CUNY Baruch (Zicklin)	-29	76	41
University of San Diego (Knauss)	-29	87	58
Denver University (Daniels)	-28	83	55
Rutgers Business School	-24	62	38
Bentley University	-24	89	65
Case Western University (Weatherhead)	-23	79	56
Hult International Business School	-23	84	61
Pace University (Lubin)	-22	92	70
University of Oklahoma (Price)	-20	82	66
University of Texas-San Antonio	-20	93	73
University of Oregon (Lundquist)	-18	81	63
Texas Tech University (Rawls)	-18	90	72
Fordham University (Gabelli)	-16	51	35
Rochester Institute of Technology (Saunders)	-15	91	76
Kent State University (Crawford)	-14	94	80
Syracuse University (Whitman)	-12	71	59
Yale University SOM	-11	14	4

Notes: Some 17 schools, nearly one in four that remained on this year’s list, saw their Fortune MBA rankings drop in double-digits 

Schools With Largest Double-Digit Gains In Fortune’s Ranking

School	Y-O-Y Increase	2024 Rank	2023 Rank
Washington University (Olin)	+18	21	39
University of Tennessee-Knoxville (Haslam)	+16	36	52
Southern Methodist University (Cox)	+13	30	43
University of Massachusetts-Amherst (Isenberg)	+13	41	54
University of Houston (Bauer)	+12	50	62
University of South Florida (Muma)</td>	+11	67	78
Texas A&M University (Mays)	+10	31	41
Texas Christian University (Neeley)	+10	39	49
American University (Kogod)	+10	43	53

Notes: The schools that advanced in double-digits were far fewer in number than those that declined. Overall, only nine schools increased their ranking in double digits, with the gains much smaller than the declines.

(See next page for Fortune’s Top 25 MBA programs)