QS Global MBA Ranking: American Programs Dominate The Top

Picture the ideal MBA ranking. It would be consistent and logical – and easy-to-understand too. It would lean heavily on quantifiable outcomes, but also incorporate feedback from stakeholders. At the same time, it would take a long-term and global view of graduate business education.

On the surface, the QS Quacquarelli Symonds MBA ranking checks all the boxes. Unlike U.S. News, QS has widened its scope beyond the United States. Contrary to Bloomberg Businessweek, QS applies the same methodology to all schools, so readers can compare programs head-to-head. Compared to The Financial Times, which applies differing weights to 21 dimensions, QS’ methodology – just five dimensions – can be quickly digested. Most of all, the QS MBA ranking is steady, reflecting incremental changes over short spurts and deep dives.

STANFORD LEADS THE PACK…SEVEN YEARS RUNNING

How steady is the QS ranking, which was released on September 25th? Well, you can start with the Stanford Graduate School of Business, which again ranks #1 – a spot it has held since 2019 when it displaced Harvard Business School. The Wharton School finished 2nd in the 2025 QS Global MBA Ranking, no different than four of the past five years. Harvard Business School rounds out the top three for the second consecutive year.

The big changes in this year’s ranking? For one, MIT Sloan rose from 6th to 4th – dispatching the London Business School to 5th in the process. For another, the Cambridge Judge Business School continued its upward surge. Over the past three years, it has climbed from 12th to 9th to 7th. Otherwise, the Top 10 remained relatively stable, with HEC Paris, Columbia Business School, IE Business School, and IESE Business each losing one spot (and INSEAD drawing the short straw and finishing 11th for the second year in a row).

That stability extends into the Top 20. Just one new program – SDA Bocconi – entered the Top 20. It debuted at #20, knocking ESADE from 19th to 21st.  Otherwise, Imperial College improved from 20th to 18th, as UCLA Anderson gained a spot and Chicago Booth and Oxford Saïd each lost one. Best of all, the differences between schools were noticeable, with only one tie in the Top 20 (Northwestern Kellogg and INSEAD at 11th).

THE METHODOLOGY

Collectively, the QS ranking evaluates full-time MBA programs using five dimensions (and accompanying weights):

Employability – 40%
Return on Investment – 20%
Entrepreneurship and Alumni Outcomes – 15%
Thought Leadership – 15%
Class & Faculty Diversity – 10%

The Employability dimension is based heavily on the QS Global Employer Survey. Here, business schools can nominate up to 400 employers that recruit their students. Overall, the survey collects data from employers on which schools they prefer to hire. QS further notes that “employers across all sectors and industries take part in the survey, and include Facebook, Google, Uber, Wells Fargo, Bank of America etc.” While this survey constitutes 35% of the 40% weight, QS also factors in employment rate, which is defined as employment of a graduating class within three months of commencement. That said, the Global Employer Survey is dogged by a lack of transparency that hampers rankings like Bloomberg Businessweek. Notably, QS doesn’t disclose underlying data like the number of surveys submitted (or even required), opting instead for a generic index.

At a 20% weight, Return on Investment constitutes the second-largest portion of the QS ranking. This is one area where QS shines, taking a longer-term view of an MBA’s value. Based on a ten-year frame, QS compares post-MBA salaries against metrics like tuition, cost of living (adjusted by location), and pre-MBA pay. In addition, QS factors in salary increases – both pre- and post-MBA. At the same time, QS rewards MBA programs that develop entrepreneurs with a bonus, “to account for the slower, but potentially much higher return for those starting a business.” Like Employability, ROI is divided into two subsets, as a fourth of the weight is given to Payback Month. In this subset, QS provides better scores to schools whose graduates retire their debt sooner (with the average being 3.5 years).

The remaining 40% of the QS ranking is divided across three dimensions. Entrepreneurship and Alumni Outcomes uses public sources to identify which business schools produced the largest number of “over 50,000 CEOs, executives and board members at the biggest companies in the world.” In a bit of overlap, QS again factors entrepreneurship into this dimension’s 15% weight. Like U.S. News, QS surveys faculty for an Academic Reputation score, while mimicking The Financial Times’ inclusion of research impact and the percentage of faculty with PhDs. Finally, a 10% weight is conferred to Class & Faculty Diversity, which is divided between the percentages of female students and faculty members and international students and faculty.

WHY STANFORD EDGED WHARTON

This methodology also explains why Stanford GSB again reigns as the world’s top MBA program according to QS. Notably, the school posted the highest index score for Entrepreneurship and Alumni Outcomes, good for a 20% weight. In a surprising development, the GSB lost.0.8 of a point in the all-important Employment index, falling from 2nd to 5th in this measure. Still, the school picked up 0.7 of a point in Thought Leadership to hold onto the #9 sport in this dimension. Despite gaining 0.9 of a point in Return on Investment, Stanford GSB still finished 50th in this measure.

In other words, the GSB scored in the Top 10 in three dimensions worth a collective 70% weight, which secured its top spot. Looking deeper, Stanford barely edged out Wharton, whose overall index score (99.8) was just 0.2 of a point behind the GSB. In fact, the Wharton School actually outscored Stanford GSB in four out of five dimensions. The big difference: Stanford destroyed Wharton in the Entrepreneurship and Alumni Outcomes dimension: 100 vs. 83.9. On top of that, Wharton lost 0.9 points in this dimension and 1.6 points in Thought Leadership from the previous year. Hence, Stanford came out on top in the tightest race since it tied with Wharton for the top spot in 2020.

Harvard and MIT are separated by 1.5 miles and connected by the Charles River. In the QS MBA Ranking, they are packed even closer together. Just 0.2 of a point differentiates the #3 and #4 programs. In the case of Harvard Business School, the program improved by four points in Entrepreneurship and Alumni Outcomes. However, it lost a point in Employability. Like HBS, MIT Sloan ranked among the ten-best in three dimensions, including tying the Wharton School as the top program for Employability and joining the University of Oxford for posting the top score in Thought Leadership. However, MIT Sloan ranked 54th in Return On Investment – a placement that coincides with Stanford GSB (50th) and Harvard Business School (55th).

NO LOVE FOR TUCK OR DARDEN

The London Business School and HEC Paris, which finished 5th and 6th respectively, also claimed three Top 10 finishes among the five dimensions. Notably, LBS finished 3rd in Employability and 4th in both Entrepreneurship and Alumni Outcomes and Thought Leadership. In contrast, HEC Paris notched the highest score in Return On Investment alongside SDA Bocconi and ESCP Business School. ESCP also nabbed the top spot for Diversity.

This year, two new business schools cracked the Top 50: EDHEC (#47) and Georgia Tech Scheller (#50). They replaced Rotterdam School of Management and IIM Bangalore. For the most part, schools gained one or two spots at most. However, there were seven programs among the Top 50 that beat the curve: IMD (27th to 24th), Warwick Business School (36th to 30th), Boston University Questrom (39th to 35th), Texas McCombs (41st to 37th), Frankfort School of Finance and Management (45th to 40th), University of Sydney (50th to 45th), and EDHEC (51st to 47th). In a reprieve of sorts, just one MBA program lost more than two spots in this QS ranking: University of Hong Kong (35th to 43rd).

As a whole, American MBA programs held the top four spots – and 11 of the Top 20 spots. Still, the ranking contains some head-scratchers. Dartmouth College’s Tuck School, which ranks among the Top 10 in LinkedIn, U.S. News, and Bloomberg Businessweek (and 12th in The Financial Times) finished just 57th in QS. The culprit: Tuck’s highest finish was 59th in Entrepreneurship and Alumni Outcomes and 69th in Employability. The University of Virginia’s Darden School, a Top 10 outlier, also ranked 64th thanks to finishing below the Top 100 in Employability. While the Indian School of Business celebrated a 6th-place finish in the LinkedIn Global MBA Ranking published earlier this month, the school reached just 86th in QS.

By the same token, Cambridge Judge reached 7th in QS, while placing 29th and 33rd in The Financial Times and LinkedIn Global MBA rankings respectively (though CEOWorld did list Judge at 14th). Tsinghua University also captured the 29th spot in the QS ranking, despite being unranked in both The Financial Times and LinkedIn rankings. The same can be said for the Frankfort School of Finance and Management, which ranked 40th in QS and unranked elsewhere. Overall, QS lists HEC Paris, IE Business School, Imperial College, and Warwick Business School higher than similar global rankings. Conversely, you’ll find INSEAD, Northwestern Kellogg, and Cornell Johnson finishing lower than one might expect.

THE GOOD AND BAD OF THE QS METHODOLOGY

One advantage to the QS MBA Ranking: It is truly global. Not only does it apply the same methodology to compare programs side-by-side – unlike Bloomberg Businessweek – but also conducts separate regional rankings that include often-neglected schools from Latin America, Middle East and Africa, and Oceania. In Latin America, Mexico’s EGADE Business School maintained the top spot, followed by Costa Rica’s INCAE Business School and Argentina’s IAE Business School. Across the Middle East and Africa, Lebanon’s Suliman S. Olayan School of Business also retained its #1 ranking, with South Africa’s Cape Town GSB and Qatar University flipping the 2nd and 3rd spots respectively. In Oceania region, the Top 3 remained the same as last year: Melbourne Business School, University of North South Wales, and the University of Sydney. In the remaining regions, the top programs include Stanford GSB (United States), University of Toronto’s Rotman School (Canada), London Business School (Europe), and the National University of Singapore (Asia).

All things considered, the QS Global MBA Ranking can be considered a peer of The Financial Times, U.S. News, and Bloomberg Businessweek. On the positive side, it integrates a mix of original collected qualitative and quantitative data, using hard numbers to anchor outcomes an. This represented measurable feedback to gauge sentiment. The QS methodology also yielded just two ties in the Top 50, a a marked improvement over U.S. News where school clusters make it difficult to truly differentiate programs. While some may argue the ranking is too predictable, it does reveal changes over time, keeping the roller-coaster loops to a minimum.

Still, QS makes many of the same mistakes as its counterparts. Take academic surveys. How attuned are faculty on the day-to-day programming and developments at competing schools? For the most part, they aren’t – which is why academic surveys are a better barometer of half-baked branding. Rather than leaning on U.S. News’ misguided academic surveys, QS would gain greater credibility by surveying students and alumni on their satisfaction with faculty, curriculum, alumni, career services, and resources, ala The Princeton Review. Like Bloomberg Businessweek, QS also features a transparency problem. The index scores may supply some guidance on the degree of separation between programs, but they don’t reveal the questions being asked or decouple the data being measured. Without that, a ranking can only provide a limited amount of guidance to applicants.

To see the QS Global MBA ranking, go to the next page.

To see how the Top 50 QS ranking compares to The Financial Times, go to Page 3.

To see how index scores across five dimensions compare over the past two years, go to Page 4.