3) The Next Big Rivalry: Columbia vs. NYU Stern

Yankees vs. Mets. Nathan’s vs. Katz’s. Macy’s vs. Gimbel’s.

New York City has always been defined by its rivalries. Just picture Mickey Mantle and Jackie Robinson playing 18 miles apart! In reality, maybe it is less rivalry and more pairing. Think Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, Tupac and Jay-Z, Frank Sinatra and Billie Holliday. These pairs may not have been yin-and-yang, but they personified the gritty, imaginative, and even graceful spirit of their Big Apple digs.

In education, you’ll find plenty of pairings, schools forever linked by geography and spirit. There’s MIT and Harvard, Berkeley and Stanford, Duke and North Carolina. Among graduate business schools, there are two New York City schools increasingly linked in the public imagination: Columbia Business School and New York University’s Stern School.

Three years ago, Columbia Business School made quite the splash. After relocating to its towering, spacious campus in Manhattanville, CBS snagged the #1 spot in The Financial Times ranking. This year, the school climbed back to rank #2 globally with the FT. NYU Stern didn’t fare as well here: It finished 31st – nosediving 10 spots in the process. However, Stern shook it off and climbed to 6th in the U.S. News MBA Ranking, edging out Columbia Business School in the process. It was a power move by Stern, which ranked 12th just three years ago. For Columbia Business School, the 2025-2026 U.S. News ranking was a return to normalcy. After finishing 11th and 12th the past two years, CBS gutted its way to 9th.

THESE B-SCHOOL RIVALS COULDN’T BE MORE DIFFERENT

On the surface, the schools couldn’t be more different. It is chic Manhattanville vs. free-spirited Greenwich. In the former, CBS is pivoting towards areas where business is headed: Analytics, Blockchain, Climate Change, and Sustainability. In contrast, NYU Stern immerses students in an EQ+IQ ethos that prepares them to build relationships and consensus in an increasingly fragmented world. While NYU Stern’s MBA population is only two-thirds the size of CBS’s 1,000 + student MBA classes, Stern’s scale encompasses over 6,000 students and 472 faculty members between its undergraduate and graduate programs.

Academically, however, both enjoy similar strengths. In a 2025 U.S. News survey of business school deans and MBA directors, NYU Stern and Columbia Business School both notched top 10 scores in 5 specializations: International Business, Marketing, Business Analytics, Finance, and Real Estate. In fact, both schools achieved their highest ranking in Real Estates. CBS and Stern also hold the well-earned reputation for being Finance-driven Wall Street feeders. Even more, they each lean heavily on their New York City digs as a major advantage for gaining experience, landing jobs, and enjoying an unforgettable MBA experience.

Alas, the schools differentiated from each other in several measures weighed by U.S. News. Mean salary accounts for 20% of the ranking. Here, NYU Stern beats out CBS by a $200,759-to-$194,287 margin. By the same token, Stern’s graduation placement rate – a 7% weight – far exceeds its Manhattanville rival: 82% vs. 67.1%. In contrast, CBS’s acceptance rate is noticeably lower than NYU Stern: 20.9% vs. 25.1% – though this measures only makes up 2% of the ranking.

STERN BESTED COLUMBIA ON MBA EMPLOYMENT RATES LAST YEAR

Beyond that, their numbers are nearly identical. NYU Stern maintains the advantage at three-month employment, a 13% weight, by a nominal 86%-to-83.7% margin. Both boast median GMAT scores of 740 and undergraduate GPAs of 3.7 – a combined 23% weight. In the survey of recruiters, both schools hit a 4.2 average on a 5-point scale. That said, a separate survey of MBA administrators showed CBS is considered the superior program – at least by academics – by a 4.4-to-4.2 margin.

What does the future hold? NYU Stern’s next target is clearly breaking into the Top 5. That would require upending MIT Sloan, which has a major advantage in Academic and Recruiter assessment (4.6 in both). That’s a 25% weight, much of which Stern can offset with higher mean salaries ($200,759 vs $195, 480). However, the Recruiter Assessment score – lowest among Top 10 programs – will act as an albatross to future progress. In Columbia’s case, the school is dogged by middling Placements Rates and Mean Pay (8th-best among Top 10 programs). Translation: NYU Stern may have peaked and CBS has a low ceiling – at least in the U.S. News ranking.

Of course, that doesn’t mean it won’t be fun to watch NYU Stern and Columbia Business School go head-to-head in the coming years. After all, the fiercest rivalries are often rooted more in similarities than differences. In this case, it will play out on the biggest stage of them all: New York City.

4) Raw Deal: Berkeley Haas & UNC Kenan-Flagler 

With every ranking, you’re more than likely to find deans who believe their school was unfairly treated. But this time around, at least two highly admired MBA programs clearly got a raw deal.

One slipped from its customary place in the Top 10; the other fell out of its typical placement among the Top 20. The descent of UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business into 11th place and UNC-Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School into 28th is a quirky anomaly undeserving of attention by applicants. After all, since 2020, the MBA program at Haas has solidly been a Top Ten program for 24 out of 26 years of U.S. News rankings. During that timeframe, no less, the school has steadily landed in seventh place for 17 out of those 26 years (see the school’s rankings below over the entire time U.S. News has ranked MBA programs). Haas’ highest rank was sixth as recently as 2019.

The 28th place finish for Kenan-Flagler is the worst showing for that school ever. The MBA program dropped eight places from last year’s rank of 20th. In many ways, this is an even greater aberration from norms. Going way back to 1990, Kenan-Flagler’s MBA program has been ranked in the Top 20 for 30 of 36 years. The school’s best rank was 15th in 1998 (see chart below).

What’s more, both schools have excellent leadership at the top, exceptional faculty, thoughtfully crafted curriculum, strong alumni networks, and some of the most qualified MBA students in the world.

If anything, their decline in this year’s ranking tells you more about the inherent problems of the ranking than it does about the schools’ MBA offerings. Minute changes in a single metric or two often have outsized impact on these rankings because the methodology failed to smartly differentiate these schools from one another. The dats is so closely clustered together that entirely inconsequential and statistically meaningless differences can make for baseless ranking conclusions.

All of this raises another essential point. Any one ranking in any single year is far less consequential than a trend line over time. The track record of these schools makes clear that Berkeley remains a Top Ten MBA, and UNC remains a Top 20 MBA, regardless of what U.S. News seems to think this year.