9) Business Schools To Watch In 2025

Up, down, and all around.

The 2025 Financial Times Global MBA Ranking features plenty of risers and fallers. Here are several schools who made notable moves in 2025 – and what’s behind them.

London Business School: The move was subtle, but noticeable. LBS crept up one spot from 8th to 7th.  Pretty insignificant – unless you factor in that the school tumbled out of the Top 10 to 16th in 2023 – after ranking 2nd in the world just two years earlier. Even if LBS ranks behind three European schools, it is a reminder that LBS is here to stay. Let’s face it: The school can crow that it ranks ahead of Harvard Business School too.

Notably, the London Business School ranked 8th for its quality of Research, not to mention 11th for Weighted Pay After Three Years ($214,823) and 16th for Career Progress. For the percentages of International Students and Faculty, LBS finished among the very top. That diversity didn’t extend to Industry Sectors, however, where the school finished 89th – the only real blemish on an otherwise solid outing.

HEC Paris: Like LBS, HEC Paris was a perennial Top 10 program until a tumble in 2022 that led to three years in the wilderness. On the outside of the Top 10, HEC Paris lost a little prestige. This year, the school returned to the Top 10 – and regained the heightened status that comes with it.

HEC Paris followed the LBS model in some ways, strong in the Career Progress and International benchmarks. Even more, the school produced the 2nd-highest score for International Course Experience, a compilation of exchanges and internships lasting a month of more. It also finished 5th for International Mobility, which examined pre- and post-MBA international assignments and alumni citizenship. That said, HEC Paris remained a cut below LBS for Research and Weighted Pay. These measures are worth a combined 26% weight, which means HEC Paris has work to do before it remains a Top 10 fixture.

CEIBS: Just five years ago, CEIBS ranked as the #5 business school in the world according to The Financial Times. It was the toast of Asia – a sign that the Eastern business education was closing the gap with the West. After COVID, CEIBS tumbled as far as 21st last year. This year, CEIBS bounced back, moving to 12th and re-establishing itself as the bar for graduate business education in Asia.

How did it happen? Think small steps. CEIBS rose from 57th to 52nd in Alumni Network and 48th to 41st in Career Services. Weighted Pay increased by over $5,000 to $194,589. At the same time, CEIBS made a major move in Research, improving from 53rd to 42nd in just one year. While ESG and Net Zero Teaching only amounts to a 3% weight, CEIBS boosted its rank from 45th to 19th. It even added a point in Salary Increase to 164%. Bottom line: CEIBS improved in dimensions worth a combined 42% weight. That’s a sold base to build for 2026.

Those are just the moves at the top end. IMD Business School jumped from 36th to 22nd. The top MBA program for International Mobility, IMD also made strides in Sector Diversity (Top 10), Alumni Network, and Career Progress. Nanyang Business School climbed 16 spots to 22nd, displacing NUS as the top business school in Singapore thanks to ranking 4th for Value For Money. Over the past three years, EMLyon Business School and ESSEC Business School have rocketed from 76th to 44th and 70th to 47th respectively. EMLYON ranked in the Top 10 in four dimensions: Value for Money, Sector Diversity, International Mobility, and ESG and Net Zero Teaching. Similarly, ESSEC finished among the ten-best for International Mobility and Sector Diversity (and 11th for ESG and Net Zero Teaching).

Next year’s FT prediction? Expect American business schools to return with a vengeance. NYU Stern, for one, lost 10 spots in 2025, while Yale SOM has fallen 14 spots in two years. Chicago Booth and Cornell Johnson both fell out of the Top 10, while Northwestern Kellogg is barely hanging onto the #10 spot after sinking four spots. International programs may have capitalized on American softness, but educational rankings are cyclical. With deep pockets, powerful networks, and brand names, American business schools are poised for a comeback.

10) Why Young Professionals Get An MBA? It’s To Get A Better Job!

Pretty much everyone would agree that young professionals get an MBA for one primary reason: To land a job they really want for a successful career. That is why business schools heavily invest in career development staffs to make sure students leave happy with the outcome.

So how much weight does the Financial Times ranking place on employment? A mere 2% and only on employment rates three months after graduation. Such woke metrics in the FT’s methodology as a school’s “carbon footprint” measure (4%) and “ESG and net zero teaching” rank (3%) now account for more than three times the value of actual employment which is less likely to be gamed.

To be sure, employment rates don’t always provide a complete picture of a school’s success in placing its graduates. That’s because some students, having left high paying jobs to return to school, are searching for the most hard-to-get jobs in private equity, venture capital, and hedge funds. Those firms are more likely to recruit off-cycle, hiring less than a handful of MBA grads in any given year. 

It’s also true that graduates from the most prestigious business schools are going to be more picky than those from second-tier institutions. That’s because they graduate with the confidence and the alumni network to know they can hold out for a position they really want. It’s one reason why Stanford MBAs, who typically earn the most compensation out the gate, often have lower employment rates than many of its peer schools.

And just because an MBA accepted a job offer doesn’t necessarily mean that job was the one they really hoped to get after earning the degree. Of course, the FT could easily ask on its alumni survey if a respondent landed the job they most wanted. It doesn’t.

Nonetheless, employment rates matter—far more than the FT weighs. And in this past year, when MBA hiring was down across the board, employment matters more than ever. In fact, 22 of the U.S. schools reporting the best employment rates showed declines in hiring last year (see below). European MBA programs did much better, with eight of the top 25 reporting better rates last year (see below).

So which schools racked up the most impressive results? According to the Financial Times data, supplied to the newspaper by business schools,

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