Harvard Business School Returns To The Conversation

Last year, Poets&Quants asked the question that was on everyone’s minds: Why Does U.S. News Hate Harvard Business School?
 
After all, the school, which is synonymous with graduate business education, ranked just 6th in the United States – after seesawing between 5th and 6th during the previous five incarnations of the U.S. News MBA Ranking. It begged the question: Was U.S. News an outlier – or simply reflecting reality over reputation?

Truth be told, HBS hasn’t fared well in recent rankings. Last year, the school’s best performance came with LinkedIn and QS, where it placed 2nd in both. Otherwise, it finished 4th in Bloomberg Businessweek and 6th in The Financial Times. Among executives surveyed by CEOWorld, HBS ranked just 4th.

Clearly, that’s M7 territory. However, Harvard Business School is the program that’s supposed to set the standard. These rankings indicate a program reduced to an also-ran.

WHERE HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL SHINED IN U.S. NEWS

And 2026 hasn’t started much better – in terms of rankings, at least. In the Financial Times Global MBA Ranking released in February, HBS finished 10th. On the plus side, that’s three spots higher than the previous year. Still, it was nine spots lower than cross-town rival MIT Sloan, which placed 1st. Not being the best MBA program in your own metro can be a tough pill to swallow, but the 2026 U.S. News MBA results may signify a resurgence at Harvard…at least where rankings are concerned.

This year, HBS finished 4th, tied with Northwestern University’s Kellogg School. That’s a far better fate than the previous year, where HBS was locked in with Dartmouth Tuck and NYU at 6th. Better still, HBS edged out MIT Sloan, which slipped to #6. Could this portend another rise in 2027?

To borrow a popular MBA phrase…That depends.

For one, Harvard Business School was among the few business schools where pay increased for graduates over the previous year. In 2025, graduates averaged $197,980 in starting pay, up from $193,505. Still, that only ranked 6th-best among programs ranked by U.S. News in a dimension worth 20% of the ranking weight. Equally worrisome is that this pay is lower than NYU Stern and Dartmouth Tuck grads and only $559 more than the gross of grads from MIT Sloan – all three of which are nipping at HBS’s heels.

The school also performs well in Peer and Recruiter Assessment scores, which are each worth a 12.5% weight. When business school deans and MBA directors were surveyed, HBS notched a 4.8, tying the school with top-ranked Stanford GSB for the highest average. Among recruiters, HBS achieved a 4.5, just 0.1 of a point below the Wharton School for the highest average. In terms of Acceptance Rate – worth an additional 2% weight – HBS reported a 11.6% rate, making it the second-most selective MBA program to Stanford GSB (6.81%) among programs ranked in the Top 25.

Clearly, HBS maintains the highest credibility among academics, employers, and students alike.

LITTLE MARGIN OF ERROR FOR AN IMPROVEMENT

That said, HBS will always carry an albatross into the U.S. News Ranking: Employment Rate. Brand reputation creates opportunities, which means HBS grads can sit back and wait for the best opportunities. Hence, just 61.4% of 2025 HBS grads had accepted job offers by graduation – fifth-lowest among Top 25 programs in a dimension with a 7% weight. Within three months of graduation, that number increases to 80.4% – or sixth-worst among Top 25 schools where the weight is 13%.

In other words, the U.S. News methodology gives Harvard Business School little room to maneuver aside from pay and placement, particularly considering that the school traditionally maxes out its advantages in surveys and inputs. Still, the University of Chicago’s Booth School, ranked 3rd, is just an index point ahead of HBS. If Harvard boosted its recruiter school back to 4.6 and its three-month employment rate by 5.7 points, the #3 spot would be all theirs. Then again, is Harvard Business School one of those programs whose advantages – deep resources, wide expertise, and well-positioned alumni – too ineffable to measure with traditional metrics? Even more, has the school’s brand made it immune to the shifting fortunes inherent to rankings anyway?

That’s an academic exercise for another time. In the meantime, it is safe to say that – to borrow a cliché – the rumors of Harvard Business School’s demise are clearly exaggerated.

UC Berkeley Haas Continues Its Surge

 
What a run!

Traditionally, the Haas School of Business was defined by its intangibles. Location-wise, Haas sits at the doorstep to San Francisco and Silicon Valley, a place that made it easy for ambitious MBAs to find internships, partnerships, and expertise. Values-wise, the school – and its Four Defining Leadership Principles – appealed to purpose-driven student leaders who wanted a program truly committed to teamwork, humility, learning, and selflessness. Let’s not forget the larger UC Berkeley ecosystem: one of America’s most highly-decorated public research institutions that excels in engineering, computer sciences, and biomedicine.

Among MBA applicants, Haas is considered a place for a ‘complete’ education. When U.S. News surveyed business school deans and MBA directors last year, the school’s average scores consistently ranked among the ten-best across the board: Finance, Marketing, Management, Entrepreneurship, Analytics, Operations, International Business, and Real Estate. Despite this, the Haas School has always been considered M7-adjacent – an MBA program that somehow doesn’t make the conversation among the truly elite business schools.

Well, that may be changing.

EXCELLENCE ACROSS THE BOARD

When a school makes a Top 10 list, it is an achievement. When it cracks a second Top 10 list, it becomes a ‘School to Watch.’ Beyond that, it is an incumbent – a program truly deserving of being recognized among the best. Regardless of different methodologies that value different data points, the Haas School of Business has consistently ranked among the very best over the past year.

During that period, you’ll find the Haas School inserting itself into the Top 10 across the major MBA rankings. That includes the 2026 U.S. News Ranking, where it moved from 11th to 10th. On the surface, the move is relatively nominal. Just one spot. In the bigger picture, it caps a banner 12 months, symbolizing that Haas has joined an entirely new set of business schools.

You can trace this shift to the 2025 Bloomberg Businessweek MBA Ranking, where Berkeley Haas leaped from 14th to 3rd. Credit major improvements for index scores across every dimension. Notably, Haas rose 33 spots in Diversity and 11 spots in both Learning and Networking. At the same time, the school claimed the #2 spot in Entrepreneurship. In the 2026 Financial Times Global MBA Ranking, Haas jumped another six spots to 9th, performing well in Weighted Salary, Research, and Alumni Network. On top of that, the school also inched its way up in the 2025 LinkedIn and QS Ranking, while also breaking into the Top 10 with CEOWorld.

In the process, Haas outranked many of the major players in one ranking or another: Northwestern Kellogg, (Financial Times), Chicago Booth (CEOWorld), and Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan (Bloomberg Businessweek).

SOME RED FLAGS TO CONSIDER

Like Harvard Business School, the Haas School pulled off a rare feat. Among the Class of 2025, starting pay increased from $186,677 to $187,701 according to U.S. News – a measure worth 20% of the ranking weight. In the Peer Assessment Survey, Haas also produced a higher average score than Columbia Business School, Dartmouth Tuck, and NYU Stern – while equaling Northwestern Kellogg’s score. By the same token, the Haas School’s 21.4% acceptance rate make it more selective than all but three MBA programs ranked above it.

That doesn’t mean that the Haas School should get too comfortable in U.S. News’s Top 10. Fact is, the methodology doesn’t favor it over the long haul. Exhibit A: Haas ranks dead last in starting pay among the Top 10 (with four programs ranked right below Haas also boasting higher pay). The program’s placement rates – both at commencement and within three months of graduation – rank near the bottom of U.S. News MBA Ranking…with these dimensions combining for a 20% weight. Add to that, the school’s 4.1 score from recruiters also ranks dead last among the Top 10.

In other words, Haas performs below most of its peers across dimensions worth a combined 52.5% weight in the U.S. News methodology. That places a ceiling on just how high Haas can go based on current trajectories.

In the case of Berkeley Haas, the business school rankings – as a whole – are doing exactly what they are should. They are tipping off potential applicants to MBA programs on the upswing. More than that, they are a reminder that the M7 schools aren’t the only places that set students up for unforgettable experiences and lucrative careers.

Next Page: A Shakeup in the Specialty Rankings

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