2024 Bloomberg Businessweek MBA Ranking: Stanford Makes It Six In A Row by: John A. Byrne on September 18, 2024 | 22,759 Views September 18, 2024 Copy Link Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email Share on LinkedIn Share on WhatsApp Share on Reddit 2024 Bloomberg Businessweek MBA Ranking: Stanford, Chicago Booth, Northwestern Kellogg, Dartmouth Tuck & Virginia Darden For the sixth time in a row, Stanford Graduate School of Business not only sits at the very top of the 2024 Bloomberg Businessweek MBA ranking. It demolishes its chief rivals, with Harvard Business School in sixth place and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in seventh. After its East Coast rival Harvard was ranked 11th by the Financial Times and sixth in U.S. News this year, some might surmise that Harvard is no longer a Top Five MBA program. At least Wharton has fared much better, tying for first on the U.S. News list with Stanford, and taking sole possession of first in the FT. Stanford’s impressive showing in the 2024 Bloomberg Businessweek ranking now means it has won top honors on this list more than any other school since its launch in 1988, edging ahead of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management which has been number one five times and Wharton and Chicago Booth which have been at the top of the ranking four times. Harvard ranked first in three tries in this ranking (see table below). 2024 Bloomberg Businessweek MBA Ranking: Similar Names At The Top With a few notable exceptions, the top of this year’s list looks very similar to the 2023 ranking. Chicago Booth was second, Kellogg third, Dartmouth Tuck fourth, and the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business fifth. The sharpest exceptions? Kellogg jumps from #7 to #3; Columbia Business School plummets from #5 to #17, and Carnegie Mellon cracks the Top 10 at #9, surging nine spots forward. Two full-time MBA programs fell out of the Top 25 this year. The University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business fell 13 places to rank 30th, down from 17th. Since former Wharton Dean Geoffrey Garrett became Marshall’s dean in 2020, the school has fallen 16 spots from 14th. The Simon Business School at the University of Rochester slipped to 28th from 25th last year. All told, this ranking shows significant stability compared to other lists (see Ten Biggest Surprises In The 2024-2025 Bloomberg Businessweek MBA Ranking). Only eight MBA programs saw year-over-year changes in double-digits, with UC-Davis Graduate School of Management falling 26 places to rank 69th and Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business gaining the most, rising 13 spots to rank 39th from 52nd last year. Howard University’s business school, which ranked 40th last year, fell off the list entirely and is positioned as an “unranked” school. PASSING THE SMELL TEST Five other schools–Michigan State, Pittsburgh, UC-Irvine, Morgan State, and Denver–made it on this year’s list after being absent last year. How does all this pass the smell test? Yale School of Management Deputy Dean Anjani Jain doesn’t think so. His analysis of the list has found that it is largely driven by compensation which he believes carries an actual weight of nearly 68%, far more than roughly 38% weight Businessweek says it assigned that metric. If the magazine adhered to its own stated methodology, Jain says that Wharton would rank 17th rather than 7th, and Columbia would fall further to place 27th instead of 17th. Businessweek disputes Jain’s findings. Besides the contrarian standing of Harvard, the underlying data used by Bloomberg Businessweek to rank full-time MBA programs would leave many puzzled. When it comes to starting pay, for example, Businessweek now thinks that Booth MBAs make more than Stanford MBA grads. NYU grads are ninth in pay, while MBAs from Columbia and MIT Sloan fail to crack the Top 10. And Harvard MBAs? According to Bloomberg Businessweek, they are 12th. And when it comes to Bloomberg Businessweek‘s entrepreneurship metric in this ranking, it seems questionable that Brigham Young University’s Marriott School would rank second, with Wharton at 27th and Michigan Ross at 23rd. Or how about the fact that Mississippi ranks better in entrepreneurship than Columbia? Yet another surprise is William & Mary’s Mason School of Business ranks 32nd overall, its MBA program landed in the Top 10 in three Businessweek categories: learning, where it ranks number one, networking (9th), and entrepreneurship (8th). 2024 Bloomberg Businessweek’s Top 10 U.S. MBA Programs Overall Rank & School Compensation Rank Learning Rank Networking Rank Entrepreneurship Rank Diversity Rank 1. Stanford Graduate School of Business 2 (6) 4 (7) 1 (5) 1 (1) 17 (20) 2. Chicago (Booth) 1 (3) 11 (16) 13 (13) 11 (4) 28 (37) 3. Northwestern (Kellogg) 5 (8) 10 (13) 4 (8) 15 (15) 21 (24) 4. Dartmouth (Tuck) 5 (1) 2 (17) 2 (4) 37 (44) 33 (32) 5. Virginia (Darden) 3 (4) 6 (4) 14 (11) 12 (34) 51 (33) 6. Harvard Business School 12 (7) 14 (26) 7 (5) 5 (10) 18 (18) 7. Pennsylvania (Wharton) 4 (5) 57 (55) 9 (17) 27 (21) 4 (10) 8. Michigan (Ross) 7 (9) 27 (9) 3 (3) 23 (29) 36 (26) 9. Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) 17 (19) 5 (46) 5 (26) 3 (13) 41 (77) 10. MIT (Sloan) 14 (12) 19 (23) 23 (35) 6 (3) 16 (8) Source: 2024-2025 Bloomberg Businessweek MBA ranking. Note: Category ranks in () are for the previous year. IMD NUDGES ASIDE SDA BOCCONI TO WIN FIRST PLACE AMONG THE 19 RANKED EUROPEAN MBA PROGRAMS Businessweek ranks schools by regions so it publishes separate lists for Europe, Canada, and Asia Pacific. IMD in Switzerland took first place in Europe this year over 18 other schools, with IESE Business School in Spain second, SDA Bocconi in Italy third, London Business School fourth, and INSEAD fifth. In capturing first place, IMD unseated Bocconi which was at the top of last year’s list. In Canada, Western University’s Ivey Business School tops the list of six schools, with Concordia’s Molson in second place, HEC Montreal in third, McGill Desautels fourth, and Toronto Metropolitan University’s Rogers School in fifth. Among the nine Asia-Pacific schools, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology won top honors, just ahead of #2 Shanghai University of Science and Economics, #3 Indian Institute of Management at Bangalore, #4 CEIBS, and #5 Indian School of Business. Of course, every school’s rank is a function of the magazine’s methodology created by editors who have little knowledge of business education. This year, Businessweek assessed 75 U.S. full-time MBA programs based on data provided by participating schools as well as responses to survey questions by students, alumni, and employers. The editors attempted to grade each program on five indexes: compensation, learning, networking, entrepreneurship, and diversity. For U.S. MBA programs, the most weight is applied to compensation, 37.7%, while “learning” gets 25.5%, and networking is assigned 18.6%. Entrepreneurship is given an 11.6% weight, while diversity is scored at a 6.6% weight. These are roughly similar to last year’s weighting with slight differences. Diversity, for example. was given a 7.1% weight in 2023 so Businessweek shaved half a percentage point from this factor. Businessweek slightly alters these weights for schools outside the U.S., excluding any metric for diversity. How could Columbia Business School fall out of the Top Ten and drop to a lowly 17th place under this methodology? The school’s full-time MBA lost ground, in some cases significantly, in each of the five metrics used by Businessweek. In learning, Columbia dropped 28 places to rank 57th among the 75 U.S. programs from 29th a year earlier; in entrepreneurship, the school lost 29 spots to rank 45th from 16th; in compensation, Columbia fell 11 places so that 12 other MBA programs were ahead of it compared to claiming second last year; in networking, it dropped 17 spots to rank 29th from 12, and in diversity, CBS slipped four places to rank 27th from 23rd. Looking back on a historical basis, from the launch of the Businessweek ranking in 1988 to the present, only six business schools have occupied the No. 1 rank over the 23 individual rankings published by the magazine. Stanford now edges out Northwestern Kellogg to lead the pack, with six wins for Stanford and five for Kellogg. (see table below). Wharton and Chicago Booth follow, with four No. 1 rankings, followed by Harvard, with 3, and Duke Fuqua with one. Harvard has done much better when looking at the schools that have reached a Top 3 rank over all those years. HBS achieved a Top 3 listing 15 out of the 23 rankings, closely followed by Chicago Booth (13), and Wharton and Kellogg (12 each). Schools With The Most #1 & Top 3 Ranks in Businessweek’s MBA Rankings MBA Program #1 Ranks Top 3 Ranks #1 Years Stanford 6 6 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2019,, 2018, Northwestern (Kellogg) 5 13 2004, 2002, 1992, 1990, 1988 Pennsylvania (Wharton) 4 12 2000, 1998, 1996, 1994 Chicago (Booth) 4 14 2012, 2010, 2008, 2006 Harvard 3 15 2017, 2016, 2015 Duke (Fuqua) 1 2 2014 Dartmouth (Tuck) 0 5 ——– Michigan (Ross) 0 1 ——– Virginia (Darden) 0 1 ——– Source: Poets&Quants analysis of Bloomberg Businessweek MBA rankings from 1988 to 2024 * Bloomberg Businessweek began ranking annually in 2015, skipping 2020 due to the pandemic Listen to our Business Casual podcast: The 2024 Bloomberg Businessweek MBA Ranking Our analysis of the new list which has Stanford on top for the sixth time in a row Continue ReadingPage 1 of 4 1 2 3 4