2025 Bloomberg Businessweek MBA Ranking: Stanford Retains #1 Spot

Seven is supposed to be a lucky number. If you ask staffers and students around the Knight Management Center, they’ll tell you Stanford’s dominance has nothing to do with luck. Instead, it is a combination of a planning and performing – coupled with an unwavering commitment to innovation and excellence.

For the 7th time, Stanford GSB claims the top spot in Bloomberg Businessweek’s Best MBA Rankings. It also distances the school from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School, which has topped the ranking five times since it was introduced in 1988, and the Wharton School and Chicago Booth, each of which have held the No. 1 ranking four times.

Released on September 16, the 2025-2026 ranking also represents a return for the Wharton School, which finished 2nd after bouncing between 6th and 9th from 2019-2023. Wharton’s five spot improvement wasn’t necessarily the big news coming out of Bloomberg Businessweek’s ranking, however. After tumbling out of the Top 10 last year, UC Berkeley’s Haas School returned with a vengeance, vaulting from 14th to 3rd. While the Haas School made a headline-grabbing move, the University of Chicago’s Booth School retreated to the shadows, plunging from 2nd to 7th. The Booth School wasn’t the only Chicago-based MBA program receiving bad news. The Kellogg School dipped from 3rd to 5th, undercutting the argument that the center of the business school university was pivoting to the Windy City.

METHODOLOGY

To compile the 2025-2026 Best MBA Rankings, Bloomberg Businessweek evaluates American business schools across five criteria using the following weights:

• Compensation: 37.7%
• Learning: 25.9%
• Networking: 18.8%
• Entrepreneurship: 11.6%
• Inclusion: 6%

Three of the criteria – Learning, Networking, and Entrepreneurship – are based on student surveys. Using a seven-point scale – where seven translates to “Completely Agree” – student survey-takers answer a variety of question. In Learning, they cover instruction quality, curriculum, mentoring, faculty support, and the development of problem-solving and strategic thinking skills. Networking questions revolve around career center effectiveness, quality of alumni engagements, and recruiter assessment of a school’s “brand power.” For Entrepreneurship, respondents evaluate the quality of their training, with recruiters also chiming in on graduates’ “entrepreneurial skills and drive.”

In contrast, Compensation is a mix of survey questions and hard data (median salary, median alumni salary, placement, percentage of class with bonus, and size of bonus). By the same token, Inclusion is weighed equally in two categories: race and ethnicity and gender.

Overall, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked 102 schools. The employment data was supplied by schools for the Class of 2024. Surveys were distributed to students who graduated between October 1, 2024 and September 30, 2025; alumni who graduated from October 1, 2016 through September 30, 2019; and recruiters who evaluated MBA students for full-time positions between 2022 and 2024. As a whole, Bloomberg Businessweek surveyed 5,372 students, 9,143 alumni, and 766 employers for the 2025-2026 Best MBA Rankings.

HAAS IS HAPPY!

Why did Stanford GSB stand out from the pack again? Mainly, the school ranked #1 in two dimensions – Networking and Entrepreneurship – according to student and survey scores. While those dimensions combined only account for 30.4% of the ranking weight, Stanford GSB also finished 2nd in Compensation, worth a 37.7% share. On top of that, the GSB placed 7th in Learning, good for another 25.7% share. The school’s only weakness? That’d be Inclusion, where its rank dipped from 17th to 32nd.

Compare that to the runner-up, the Wharton School, which produced the highest rating for Compensation. That said, Wharton only ranked among the Top 10 in one other dimension – Networking at 6th.  Beyond that, Wharton finished 16th for Inclusion, 19th for Entrepreneurship, and 51st for Learning, enabling Stanford GSB to easily outpace the school.

The Haas School was undoubtedly the most consistent MBA program in the American sector. Rounding out the Top 3, Haas was the only school to rank among the Top 10 across all five dimensions, topping out at 2nd in Entrepreneurship. Harvard Business School improved two spots to move to 4th, buoyed by upticks in Compensation (12th to 8th) and Networking (7th to 4th). Rounding out the Top 5 is Northwestern University’s Kellogg School, which lost ground in Networking (4th to 8th) and Inclusivity (21st to 48th) from the previous year.

BIG WINNERS: CORNELL & COLUMBIA

Dartmouth College’s Tuck School and Chicago Booth both experienced downturns in the Bloomberg Businessweek Ranking. Ranked 2nd as recently as 2021, Tuck slipped from 4th to 6th, though its Entrepreneurship ranking has jumped from 44th to 28th in the past two years. Booth’s descent to 7th can be traced to going from 1st to 6th in the all-important Compensation dimension, not to mention losing 13 spots to rank 24th in Learning. While many top MBA programs lost ground in Inclusion, Booth ranked 29th, nearly identical to its 28th place finish in the 2024-2025 ranking. The University of Virginia’s Darden School managed to cling to the Top 10, though still sinking from 5th to 10th. While ranking 4th in Compensation, Darden slumped from 6th to 24th in Learning and 12th to 22nd in Entrepreneurship.

Darden’s misfortune was a gain for Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School. Johnson broke into the Top 10 at 8th after being on the proverbial outside last year at 11th. This year, Johnson ranked in the Top 10 for both Compensation and Networking, while ranking in Top 20 in all other Dimensions (well, technically 21st for Inclusivity). After dwelling at 17th in the 2024-2025 ranking, Columbia Business School vaulted to 9th, excelling in Compensation (3rd) while struggling in Learning (46th).

While Cornell Johnson can celebrate, MIT Sloan should recalibrate. Sloan lost a spot to take Johnson’s place at 11th. That’s unfortunate, as Sloan ranked among the -best in every dimension except Inclusivity (a still-respectable 21st). The problem? Sloan only finished in the Top 10 in one dimension (Entrepreneurship at 7th). That’s still a better fate than Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School. A year ago, Tepper was riding high after leaping nine spots to 9th. Now, Tepper has returned to 15th, despite ranking among the Top 10 in Learning, Networking, and Entrepreneurship. In fact, Tepper lost minimal ground across its dimensions, with the worst being a six-spot drop in Inclusivity (41st to 47th).  The University of Michigan’s Ross School experienced similar woes, going from 8th to 14th (after cracking the Top 10 at 9th in 2023). True to form, Ross’s decline can be attributed to Compensation – worth over a third of the ranking weight – where the school plunged from 7th to 14th.  In addition, Ross slid seven spots in Learning, ten spots in Networking, and nine sports in Entrepreneurship.

Next Page: International Rankings

Pages 3-5: MBA Programs Ranked 1-68 Plus 7 Years of Historical Rankings 

 

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