P&Q’s Must Reads: 2025 Fortune MBA Ranking: It’s Harvard Again!

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: 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 the 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. Schools that have long been in the Top 25 have either fallen off the Fortune ranking entirely or feature well below their historic rankings. 

Yet, the very top of the list has more expected players.  Harvard Business School, for example, claims first place for the fourth straight yea.

Poets&Quants’ editor and founder John Byrne breaks down the full ranking in this story, which you’ll find in our trending tab.

No. 2: In Leaked U.S. News Ranking, Penn Falls To Lowest Spot In 27 Years

The student newspaper of the University of Pennsylvania has published a leaked list of the top 10 schools in U.S. News & World Report‘s 2024-2025 ranking of the top universities in the United States — two weeks early — and it shows Penn sinking to its lowest rank this century.

The Daily Pennsylvanian published an advance copy of the 10 top schools in the Best National Universities ranking earlier this week. It shows Penn dropping to 10th from sixth place, its lowest rank since 1997, when it ranked 13th. The school, home to The Wharton School, which was No. 1 in Poets&Quants‘ most recent ranking of undergraduate business programs, ranked as high as No. 4 on U.S. News’ university list as recently as 2010.

You can see the sneak peak of US News’ Top 10 in this article, which appears on our homepage.

No. 3:  The 100 Highest-Funded MBA Startups Of 2024

This week, Poets&Quants presents our list of the 100 highest-funded MBA startups of 2024. As we’ve done each year since 2014, we solicited MBA-founded startups from the world’s best MBA programs to compile a list based on a single metric: how much funding a startup has raised in the past five years, the most accessible apples-to-apples comparison.

This year, MBA founded startups at INSEAD and London Business School nabbed the top two spots with fintech startups that have raised more than $2.6 billion between them.

Our 2024 list features 100 MBA founded startups from 12 leading business schools from around the world. Altogether, the startups have raised nearly $7 billion, despite a tougher VC market early this year. 

See the full list now on our homepage.

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: Who Should Work With An MBA Consultant?  In this article, available from our homepage, we identify nine types of MBA candidates who can benefit the most from an MBA admissions consultant. 

Next: GMAT Preparation For Busy Test Takers. Menlo Coaching has prepared a comprehensive guide for those preparing for the GMAT Focus edition. You can find it in our admissions humb.

Finally: What It Costs To Get An MBA From A Top Business School.

This article, up now on our homepage, has the cost data on all of the top MBA programs.

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

I also want to alert school seekers to our events tab from our main menu. There, you’ll find all the upcoming admissions events for a range of degrees and programs including full-time and online MBAs, specialized masters, entrepreneurship and more. Registration is 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.