Poets&Quants International 2024-2025 MBA Ranking: It’s INSEAD Again!

For the tenth time in the past 15 years, INSEAD has captured first place in Poets&Quants‘ ranking of the best full-time MBA programs outside the U.S. This latest win in our 2024-2025 international MBA ranking follows last year’s No. 1 showing for the European school with campuses in Fontainebleau, France, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, and San Francisco.

It’s an extraordinary level of achievement. In the 15 years that Poets&Quants has published its composite rankings, no school has racked up more top honors than INSEAD. The closest is Harvard Business School, which has taken over the top spot in our U.S. MBA ranking seven times.

INSEAD’s 10-month Accelerated MBA program allows students to start in January or August on its France or Singapore campuses. The school takes in roughly 1,000 MBA students each year, making it the largest full-time MBA program in the world. With more than 80 different nationalities in a typical class, students enter into a truly diverse and quintessentially global experience. A recent revamping of the MBA curriculum has increased the focus on sustainability, with a real-life business simulation capstone. The program was named Poets&Quants MBA Program of the Year in 2023.

POETS&QUANTS INTERNATIONAL RANKING: ISB REMAINS THE TOP SCHOOL IN INDIA

Rounding out the top five full-time international MBA programs this year were No. 2 IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain, No. 3 London Business School in the United Kingdom, No. 4 SDA Bocconi in Milan, Italy, and No. 5 Oxford Said Business School. The MBA programs at both Oxford and Cambridge landed in the Top Ten, with Cambridge Judge placing eighth, down a mere one place from seventh last year. This ranking follows the publication of our 2024-2025 list of the best U.S. MBA programs.

Once again, the Indian School of Business beat out every IIM to gain the highest MBA ranking for a program in India. ISB placed 11th best, bumping up two places from its year-earlier rank. That put the school above IIM-Bangalore, which finished 13th, and IIM-Ahmedabad, which placed 19th. Only one school in China made the Top Ten: Ceibs in Shanghai, placing ninth in a tie with Switzerland’s IMD.

This year’s composite list includes one consequential change: the addition of LinkedIn’s MBA ranking which for the first time included international business schools. The Financial Times weighs 60%, while both Bloomberg Businessweek and LinkedIn account for 20% of the ranking. As a result, some rank changes occurred due to the shift in our methodology to include the extra LinkedIn datapoint which tracks the career progress of MBA graduates over time. That change proved extremely helpful to several of the Indian Institutes of Management, all of which rose in this year’s ranking. The IIMs in both Calcutta and Lucknow advanced in double digits, with IIM-Calcutta gaining 10 places to rank 31st and IIM-Lucknow moving up 11 spots to rank 38th.

SOME 13 MBA PROGRAMS SAW DOUBLE-DIGIT GAINS OR DROPS

Our ranking takes into account a massive wealth of quantitative and qualitative data captured in these two major lists, from surveys of corporate recruiters, MBA graduates, deans and faculty publication records to the latest salary and employment statistics of alumni. Poets&Quants ranks U.S. MBA programs separately. By blending the rankings together, we’ve come up with a more authoritative ranking of MBA programs. The list tends to diminish anomalies and other statistical distortions that often occur in one ranking or another.

The system penalizes schools that either fail to make both rankings or shop for the best ranking they can get and avoid lists where they are less likely to do well. Yet, many of those schools will trumpet their single ranking, hoping that readers will simply assume that a school’s position on one list will be similar to its rank on another. That’s not true as the often considerable differences in the ranks of a school across the two lists clearly show. So ranks based on more inputs have more credibility than those based on only one or two.

This year, some 13 MBA programs showed double-digit declines or improvements in their ranking.  Cranfield University’s School of Management skyrocketed 31 places to 20th on the list from 51st a year ago. It was the most significant leap on the list. This surge reflects improvements in its Bloomberg Businessweek ranking (now #13) and its ability to leverage LinkedIn’s employment outcomes. Its emphasis on practical learning and close ties to industry have paid off.

P&Q’s Top Ten International MBA Programs Of 2024-2025

Once again, INSEAD’s 10-month accelerated MBA program tops the list, a feat the school has accomplished ten out of the past 15 years