2026 Part-Time MBA Ranking: Another Year, Another Tie At The Top Of U.S. News

There is no secret which business schools top the U.S. News & World Report Part-Time MBA Ranking. For the past nine years, the Top 3 has been reserved for three programs, each taking a turn at the top spot.

Last year, the Big 3 – the University of Chicago’s Booth School, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School, and the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School tied for the #1 spot. Call it a letdown. After all, no one wants a tie. It is neither clear nor convincing, more dispiriting than definitive for an audience seeking guidance as much as bragging rights.

This year’s Part-Time MBA Ranking also lacks the same decisiveness. At the top, Northwestern Kellogg and UC Berkeley Haas again top the list. Chicago Booth, which has ranked 1st in six of the past eight years, slipped to 3rd. Here, it tied with New York University’s Stern School, which inched up a spot. Rounding out the Top 5 is UCLA’s Anderson – a model of consistency considering it has held the #5 spot for nine years running.

True to form, the University of Michigan’s Ross School and the University of Texas’s McCombs School tied for 6th, with Ross moving up a spot. Ohio State’s Fisher College held onto 8th, while Georgia Tech’s Scheller College and USC’s Marshall School exchanged the 9th and 10th spots respectively.

U.S. NEWS’ TOP PART-TIME MBA PROGRAMS: THROUGH THE YEARS

School	U.S. News Rank in 2026	U.S. News Rank In 2025	U.S. News Rank In 2024	U.S. News Rank In 2023	U.S. News Rank In 2022	U.S. News Rank In 2021	U.S. News Rank In 2020	U.S. News Rank In 2019	U.S. News Rank In 2018
University of California-Berkeley (Haas)	1	1	2	1	2	2	2	2	1
Northwestern University (Kellogg)	1	1	3	3	3	3	3	3	3
University of Chicago (Booth)	3	1	1	2	1	1	1	1	2
New York University (Stern)	3	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4
University of California-Los Angeles (Anderson)	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (Ross)	6	7	6	7	7	6	6	6	6
University of Texas-Austin (McCombs)	6	6	7	6	8	7	7	8	7
Ohio State University (Fisher)	8	8	10	15	11	10	NA	14	9
Georgia Tech (Scheller)	9	10	17	11	16	17	NA	NA	NA
University of Southern California (Marshall)	10	9	8	8	9	9	NA	14	11
Georgetown (McDonough	11	10	9	9	17	14	NA	NA	NA
University of Washington (Foster)	11	17	10	11	10	14	NA	NA	NA
Rice University (Jones)	11	15	15	15	11	17	NA	NA	NA
Indiana University (Kelley)	14	16	13	15	11	10	9	9	13
University of Minnesota – Twin Cities (Carlson)	15	10	15	14	11	10	NA	7	9
Boston College (Carroll)	16	17	23	28	30	35	NA	NA	NA
Texas-Dallas (Jindal)	17	14	13	11	19	22	NA	NA	NA
Washington University (Olin)	18	27	23	20	19	14	NA	NA	NA
Villanova University	18	27	NA	NA	NA	35	NA	NA	NA
Boston University (Questrom)	20	27	33	37	43	34	NA	NA	NA
Emory University (Goizueta)	20	14	20	19	11	13	NA	NA	NA
Maryland (Smith)	22	19	10	21	25	28	NA	NA	NA

THE U.S. NEWS METHODOLOGY

This past cycle, U.S. News reached out to 245 AACSB-accredited Part-Time MBA programs, including only “in-person, hybrid and flexible learning programs” and removing predominantly online degree programs from the mix. To qualify, school must have enrolled 10 students minimum during fall 2025 and had one entering class in either the fall season of 2023 or 2024. Ultimately, 233 Part-Time programs qualified for the ranking, eight fewer than the previous year.

To develop the Part-Time MBA Ranking, U.S. News relies on six dimensions. The most important – in U.S. News’s view – is the Peer Assessment Score, which accounts for 50% of the ranking weight. Here, business school deans and director assess the academic quality of peer schools on a scale of 1 (marginal) to 5 (outstanding). As a whole, 55.7% of targeted respondents responded to the survey, which has been criticized for heavily factoring feedback from a segment that often has little day-to-day contact from rival programs.

Part-Time Student Ratio and Part-Time Students Total each constitute a 12.5% share of the ranking. The former is the “percentage of each business school’s fall 2025 enrollment of part-time students” according to U.S. News. The latter values the number of Part-Time students in the program, as the ratio rewards a higher percentage and the number prizes sheer size. In addition, Median GMAT and GRE scores and Undergraduate GPA each receive a 10% weight. Work Experience – or the “average number of months of work experience among fall 2025 new entrants” – makes up the remaining 5% of the Part-Time formula weight.

KELLOGG & HAAS GO HEAD-TO-HEAD

How do the top programs – Northwestern Kellogg and UC Berkeley Haas – fare against each other? In the biggest dimension – Peer Assessment Score – Kellogg holds a slight edge by a 4.6-to-4.5 margin. That said, Haas enjoyed the advantage in total student population by an 1,153-to-863 student margin (with U.S. News not supplying the Part-Time Student Ratio at press time). The schools also cancelled each other out in terms of test scores and undergraduate GPAs. Haas boasted higher median GMATs (645 vs. 635) and GREs (161 vs. 159 in Verbal and 162 vs. 161 in Quant). However, Kellogg made up the difference in Undergraduate GPA: 3.59 vs. 3.43. When it comes to Work Experience, Haas claims the high ground, with entering students averaging 96 months of experience against 74 months at Kellogg. In other words, each school carry unique advantages – but nothing particularly conclusive that tips the scales.

Greg Hanifee, Associate Dean of Degree Operations at Kellogg, attributes the program’s success to its flexibility, curriculum and culture. “We are incredibly proud that our part-time program continues to be recognized as the best in business education.” Hanifee tells Poets&Quants. This ranking reflects our unwavering commitment to a high-caliber, flexible academic experience that empowers our students to excel professionally and personally and the tremendous work our faculty and staff deliver. With courses offered in both Chicago and Evanston, with global exchange programs and immersive deep-dives abroad, and the ability to be remote as needed, Kellogg students enjoy a dynamic curriculum with a deeply collaborative community, preparing leaders for whatever future the evolving global landscape brings.”

Technically, Booth performs better than Kellogg in Median GMAT, Total Enrollment, and Work Experience, while matching their cross-town rival in the all-important Peer Assessment Survey at 4.6 – the highest among all schools ranked by U.S. News. That said, the school experienced noticeable drops in Enrollment (885 vs. 945 Students) and Median GMAT (675 vs. 691).  While 3rd-ranked NYU Stern held steady in its Peer Assessment and Work Experience dimension, it produced a marked improvement in Enrollment (1,584 vs. 1,542 students).

WINNERS & LOSERS

Beyond The Top 10, several schools made impressive gains. The University of Washington’s Foster School climbed from 17th to 11th, while Villanova University and Washington University’s Olin School each rose nine spots to 18th. Boston University’s Questrom also vaulted nine spots to crack the Top 20. The University of Colorado’s Leeds School and CUNY’s Baruch College moved up 18 and 10 spots respectively to enter the Top 30. The University of Illinois at Chicago raced up 35 spots to 63rd, tying the school with Fordham University’s Gabelli School, which improved by 25 spots. And there must be something in the air in St. Louis. The University of Missouri at St. Louis saw its fortunes improve from 126th to 74th. At the same time, Saint Louis University’s Chaifetz School leaped from 117th to 82nd.

In contrast, The University of Minnesota’s Carlson School slipped five spots to 15th, while Emory University’s Goizueta School and Wake Forest University lost six and seven spots respectively to finish 20th and 26th. Rutgers Business School and the University of Utah’s Eccles School each plunged from 23rd to 35th (with UC Irvine’s Merage School losing 15 spots to finish 38th). These were still far better fates than the ones endured by the University of Arizona’s Eller College (40th to 67th) and UC Riverside (56th to 85th).

Looking at the data points individually, UC Berkeley Haas and Chicago Booth Part-Time MBAs entered business school with the highest median GMATs (645), while Rockhurst University (3.69) and Lehigh University (3.68) reported the highest undergraduate GPAs. NYU Stern entrants achieved the highest GRE Verbal scores (163), while Michigan Ross students notched the best Quant scores (163). You’ll find students at Claremont Graduate University’s Drucker School average 186 months of professional experience before joining the Part-Time MBA program, which comes out to 15.5 years. In terms of sheer program size, NYU tops all comers with 1,584 students enrolled in its Part-Time ranks.

Like previous years, the U.S. News Part-Time MBA Ranking is clogged with ties. In the Top 50 alone, there are 17 ties, including four school logjams at 26 and 49 and three school bottlenecks at 35, 38, 41, and 44. Further down, there are 8 schools locked together at 74 and 7 schools tangled up at both 67 and 98. Such lack of separation invites skepticism on whether the methodology can truly measure credible differences between Part-Time programs.

See the next pages for the top 100 schools in the 2025 U.S. News Part-Time MBA Ranking (along with underlying data).

© Copyright 2026 Poets & Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets & Quants, please submit your request HERE.