QS Global MBA Ranking: A New #1 Replaces Stanford After 6 Years

On the surface, greatness is a reflection of talent. Meticulously constructed and choreographed, talented teams can disrupt and dominate their fields. In the end, talent is fleeting. The real test of greatness is consistency: achieving that elusive elite level year-after-year. That requires an unwavering buy-in and a clear purpose. More than that, it demands an openness to evolve – without losing focus on the differentiators that makes the team great.

In recent years, the Stanford Graduate School of Business has embodied greatness. It is the go-to school for the most talented professionals – where 85% of all accepted applicants enroll in the program. When GSB students graduate, employers pay them more than any other MBA program. When Stanford MBA alumni are surveyed by The Financial Times each year, they give their alma mater the highest satisfaction rate of any school – a 9.975 score on a 10-point scale in 2024 to be exact.

WHARTON EMERGES IN 2026

On Tuesday, Bloomberg Businessweek released its annual MBA ranking. For the 7th straight year, the Stanford Graduate School of Business ranked as the graduate business school in the world. That’s where the QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) Global MBA Ranking deviates from its Bloomberg Businessweek counterpart. Unveiled Wednesday, the QS ranking was expected to rubber stamp the same results. However, after ranking Stanford GSB as the world’s top MBA program for six consecutive years, QS has found a new #1, denying the GSB a 7th straight honor.

This year, the Wharton School has snagged the top spot in the 2026 QS Ranking. In fact, this year’s Top 3 find themselves in new positions. Not only did Wharton move up a spot, but so did Harvard Business School, which found itself as this year’s runner-up. By the same token, MIT’s Sloan School, previously #4, now rounds out the Top 3.

And Stanford GSB? The school tumbled all the way to 4th, edging out HEC Paris by just 0.2 of a point.

The QS may be American-centric at the top, but four European programs – HEC Paris, London Business School, Cambridge Judge, and INSEAD – hold the 5th through 8th positions respectively (with INSEAD climbing three spots to boot). At the same time, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School moved from 11th to 9th, while Columbia Business School dipped from 8th to 10th.

Overall, it could be argued that QS remains the most stable of rankings. Beyond Stanford GSB’s fall, the biggest movement involved the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, which jumped from 18th to 12th. In contrast, IESE Business School tumbled 5 spots to 15th. Overall, every MBA program that ranked among the Top 20 last year remained there in 2026. That’s comparable to past years. In fact, just one program entered the Top 20 in the 2025 ranking – the same total as 2024.

RANKING METHODOLOGY

QS – once known as Top MBA – has been involved in been involved in higher education consulting and data collection for over three decades. To rank full-time MBA programs, QS relies on a model that consists of 5 dimensions carrying the following weights:

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

Like the U.S. News ranking, the QS uses a mix of surveys completed by employers and academics, along with collecting data from business schools.

Employability: This is double the weight of any other dimension in the QS ranking. The vast majority – which comes out to 35% of the entire ranking – is devoted to a Global Employer Survey. Here, business schools can nominate up to 400 employers that recruit its graduates to participate. According to QS, “Employers across all sectors and industries take part in the survey, and include Facebook, Google, Uber, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, etc.” The survey’s purpose, says QS is to provide an “accurate impression of the reputation of a school compared to its peers among relevant employers who are hiring MBAs.” The remaining 5% is allotted to graduate placement rate within three months of graduation.

Entrepreneurship and Alumni Outcomes: Worth a collective 15% weight, QS reserves two-thirds of the weight in Alumni Outcomes, an index that cross-references school alumni against “over 50,000 CEOs, executives and board members at the biggest companies in the world including Apple, Amazon, UBS, IBM, Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase, ExxonMobil, AT&T, PepsiCo.” Although QS correlates business school success with successful alumni at top companies, it balances this philosophy by factoring in alumni who have excelled in Entrepreneurship, using data that is self-reported by schools.

Return On Investment: The second-largest weight, ROI is divided into 10-Year ROI and Payback Month, with the former worth three-quarters of the weight. The ROI component factors in pre-graduation variables like foregone pay, tuition, and cost of living against pre- and post-MBA pay. That said, loans and scholarships were excluded from the calculations. However, QS does measure cost payback, with higher scores given to schools whose graduates close their debts before a 3.5-year average.

Thought Leadership: This dimension is divvyed up between three variables. Two-thirds of the weight covers Academic Reputation, which is a survey completed by academics who nominate the MBA programs that they consider to be the best in the world. The remainder is divided up evenly between Research Impact (scope and quality of research) and Percentage of Faculty with Ph.Ds.

Class & Faculty Diversity: This dimension examines two tracks: percentage of female faculty and students and the percentage of international faculty and students.

WHY WHARTON WON … AND STANFORD STUMBLED

Wharton’s ascension shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, the school broke free of Stanford GSB to stand alone as the #1 MBA program in the United States according to U.S. News. For the second straight year, Wharton ranked as the top business school worldwide in The Financial Times MBA ranking. Add to that, the school jumped from 5th to 2nd in the new Bloomberg Businessweek ranking too.

This year, the Wharton School boasts a perfect 100 index score with QS – after reaching 99.8 last time around. The reason: the school improved across 4 of the 5 dimensions. In fact, Wharton raised its score by a point or more in Entrepreneurship and Alumni Outcomes and Return on Investment (and 0.9 of a point in Thought Leadership). The only area where the school lost ground was Diversity, slipping from a 78.3 to 77.3 score (with Wharton also losing 12 spots in Bloomberg Businessweek’s Diversity dimension). In QS’s most valued dimension – Employability worth a 40% weight – Wharton improved by 0.2 of a point to 98.8 – higher than any other business school.

Compare that to Stanford GSB, which lost 0.9 of a point in the all-important Employability dimension. That said, the GSB ranked 1st again in Entrepreneurship and Alumni Outcomes – 14.7 points than Wharton, no less. While Stanford GSB improved in Return on Investment, it still fell nearly 4 points short of Wharton in an area carrying a 20% weight. Even more, the school experienced nominal declines in Thought Leadership and Diversity, trailing Wharton in both. In other words, Stanford GSB produced lower scores than Wharton in 4 of 5 dimensions – and the one they dominated only carried a 15% weight.

Advantage: Wharton.

HARVARD VERSUS MIT: A LOCAL GRUDGE MATCH

The Wharton School enjoyed a similar advantage over Harvard Business School, which also only outscored their Philadelphia rivals in the Entrepreneurship and Alumni Outcomes dimension. However, the real action could be found between HBS and MIT Sloan, programs that are separated by a 10-minute car ride. Looking deeper, Sloan again distanced itself from Harvard in Employability (98.2 vs. 96.6) and Thought Leadership (98.9 vs. 96.6). In fact, MIT Sloan tied with Oxford Saïd as the best in the world for Thought Leadership. However, HBS edged out MIT Sloan in Return on Investment and Diversity…before dominating in Entrepreneurship and Alumni Outcomes (98.3 vs. 91.3). In the end, that made all the difference as HBS came away with a 0.2 of a point advantage overall.

Internationally, HEC Paris posted the 2nd-best Return on Investment score – not to mention Top 10 Employability and Thought Leadership scores – which helped the school ranks as the best MBA program outside the United States according to QS. Three European programs – SDA Bocconi, Mannheim Business School, and ESCP Europe – tied for the highest score in Return on Investment, with ESCP Europe also ranking 1st in the Diversity dimension.

The QS ranking offers several advantages over peer rankings. For one, it avoids the ties that undermine the U.S. News MBA ranking. There were just four ties among the Top 50 schools – and none stringing together more than two schools. Like LinkedIn and The Financial Times, the ranking is also global, applying the same standards to American and international programs. As a result, readers can compare these programs side-by-side. In addition, the QS MBA Ranking offers a major upgrade over The Financial Times. Rather than calculating salary over a three-year period, QS stretches it out 10 years to look at overall return.

MORE FAVORABLE RANKINGS GIVEN TO UK SCHOOLS

As noted earlier, the QS is a bastion of stability. Take business schools ranked between 21-50. Just two schools – St. Gallen and EMLYON – entered the Top 50 (with the University of Toronto’s Rotman School and the University of Hong Kong falling out of it). In fact, Alliance Manchester’s move from 47 to 39 was the largest change this year. The next largest shake-up – aside from the aforementioned 7-spot improvement from Oxford Saïd – involved 4-spot drops from UCLA Anderson and Carnegie Mellon Tepper and a 4-spot improvement by ESCP.

Looking historically, MIT Sloan has been gathering momentum over the past four years, rising from 6th to 3rd. The same could be said for Cambridge Judge (12th to 7th), Northwestern Kellogg (14th to 9th), Yale SOM (18th to 12th), and ESCP (48th to 26th).

Compared to the globally-focused MBA rankings like The Financial Times and LinkedIn, other patterns emerge. Notably, QS scores Cambridge Judge much higher than its counterparts, which both rank the program in the 30s. The same could be said for Imperial College, where its 19th ranking with QS runs counter to The Financial Times (38th) and LinkedIn (37th). Both programs are based in the United Kingdom, as is Warwick Business School, whose 30th placement with QS stands in opposition to the FT (62nd) and LinkedIn (59th). As always, QS’s methodology remains unfriendly to Dartmouth College’s Tuck School and the University of Virginia’s Darden’s – programs ranked in both the Top 20 with The Financial Times and LinkedIn that don’t even crack the QS Top 50.

Regionally, the University of Toronto’s Rotman received the nod as Canada’s top MBA program. In Latin America, the honor was reserved for EGADE Business School. The National University of Singapore was the pride of Asia, while Melbourne Business School and Cape Town GSB ranked as the top MBA programs in Oceania and Africa and the Middle East respectively.

A METHODOLOGY FRAUGHT WITH FLAWS

However, the QS MBA Ranking duplicates many of the mistakes of its counterparts. Take transparency, an issue that dog both LinkedIn and Bloomberg Businessweek. Rather than supplying the underlying data that enables potential applicants to dig deeper into the how and why, QS simply supplies an index number for each dimension. That’s the same disappointing approach as Bloomberg Businessweek (though an upgrade over LinkedIn simply delivering an overall ranking). For example, readers cannot compare recruiter or academic scores of their target institutions, to see the true separation between the programs. QS doesn’t share the survey questions (or their phrasing), either.

The recruiter and academic surveys also undercut the QS ranking’s credibility, no different than U.S. News. In the latter, they each account for a 12.5% share of the weight – far less than QS’s 35% weight for recruiters and 10% weight for academics. While recruiters are a credible source to learn which schools develop the most successful talent, some of the 35% weight could have been invested in a fourth source of information: students and alumni. These segments could speak to quality of teaching, curriculum, career support, facilities, resources, and classmates. That would enable QS to evaluate MBA programs using the most up-to-date information from a pool who actually experiences their programs on a day-to-day basis. This makes students a more reliable source than academics, whose distance from the programs they evaluate naturally produce scores grounded more on reputation and limited engagements.

Dated information is another drawback for Alumni Outcomes, which carries a 10%. While senior leadership positions can indicate strong networks and learning prowess, they are potentially a lagging indicator reflective of practices that could theoretically be 30-40 years old. A far better option is LinkedIn’s Ability to Advance dimension, which leverages the platform’s data to track promotions among recent cohorts (even if it remains unpublished). While 10-Year ROI is a novel concept, it still excludes loan interest and scholarship support – rendering it an unreliable metric.

As a result, these flaws – particularly the misguided methodology and the lack of supporting data behind the index scores – make QS a solid concept that can’t overcome skepticism the same way as U.S. News and The Financial Times. Until these flaws are corrected, QS will remain an also-ran ranking designed to validate existing sentiment over staking out new ground.

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 and LinkedIn, go to Page 3.

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

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