Georgetown Tumbles Seven Spots To No. 31

 
Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business fell seven places to No. 31 in the new U.S. News ranking, one of the year’s more consequential drops. This is not just a matter of sliding a few lines on a table. It pushes Georgetown out of the top 25 and into a different bracket in the minds of many applicants.

That is what makes the fall stand out. Georgetown had been remarkably steady, holding a top-25 position for six straight years. Whatever turbulence the ranking produced elsewhere, McDonough had managed to stay in roughly the same range.

This year, that changed all at once. The drop suggests that one or more of the metrics most heavily weighted by U.S. News moved in the wrong direction, and in the current methodology that usually means outcomes.

WHEN A SMALL SHIFT BECOMES A BIG FALL

That is where Georgetown appears most vulnerable. U.S. News now gives enormous weight to short-term career results, especially employment at graduation and three months after graduation. If a school posts softer placement numbers in a difficult hiring market, the ranking can punish it quickly.

That is especially true for a program like Georgetown, which has long sold a global, policy-adjacent, mission-driven MBA in Washington, D.C. That positioning has real strengths. But if more graduates take longer to land jobs, or pursue paths that do not maximize immediate pay, the methodology is not especially forgiving.

Georgetown also lacks the kind of ultra-elite admissions profile that can offset weaker employment results. It is a strong school with a respected brand, but not one that can rely on extreme selectivity or top-of-market compensation to shield it from a bad year in outcomes.

A DROP THAT FEELS BIGGER THAN THE NUMBER

That is why falling from 24th to 31st feels more significant than some similar moves elsewhere. A school that had become a fixture in the top 25 suddenly finds itself outside that group, and applicants tend to notice those threshold changes more than they notice the finer distinctions within a band.

None of this means Georgetown has suddenly become a weak MBA program. It remains a well-regarded school with strong connections, a distinctive location, and a clear identity. But U.S. News is not measuring identity. It is measuring a narrow set of inputs, and right now those inputs appear to have moved against McDonough.

So Georgetown’s tumble looks less like a long-term collapse than a sharp reminder of how brutal this ranking can be when short-term employment softens. In a formula now dominated by outcome data, even a program with years of consistency can fall into a different tier very quickly.

TOP 10 (ACTUALLY 14) DECLINERS IN THE U.S. NEWS BEST BUSINESS SCHOOLS RANKING, 2025-2026

School	2026 Rank	2025 Rank	Change
Texas Christian University (Neeley)	60	43	-17
Northeastern University (D’Amore-McKim)	83	68	-15
Baylor University (Hankamer)	67	54	-13
University of California–Riverside	101	88	-13
Rutgers University	63	53	-10
CUNY Baruch (Zicklin)	71	61	-10
University of Detroit Mercy	87	77	-10
Syracuse University (Whitman)	63	54	-9
Ohio State University (Fisher)	32	24	-8
Michigan State University (Broad)	43	35	-8
University of Wisconsin–Madison	48	40	-8
University of California–Irvine (Merage)	51	43	-8
George Washington University	69	61	-8
University of Cincinnati (Lindner)	81	73	-8

Source: U.S. News

A Tale Of Two States

 
To paraphrase Charles Dickens: It is the best times (in North Carolina) and the worst of times (in Georgia) according to the 2026 U.S. News MBA Ranking.

Take UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, fresh off the opening of its new Bell Hall. It gained 7 spots to rank 21st. Call it a return to normalcy, as the school bee-bopped between 19th and 22nd from 2020-2024 in U.S. News. Compare that to Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, which has finished either 17th or 18th over the three previous years. Goizueta tumbled six spots to 23rd – the school’s lowest finish since being 26th in 2021. And the U.S. News Ranking was equally cruel to Georgia Tech’s Scheller College, which also lost six spots to finish 27th – or roughly the range where it had ranked from 2020-2024.

Rankings have always been a step forward and a step back proposition, where everything from a 0.1 of a point drop in a recruiter survey or a 4% decrease in placement can ripple into a loss of a few places (maybe more depending on the ties that dog the U.S. News Ranking). Every year, there are winners and losers based on slim margins and faulty methodologies. Last year, Kenan-Flagler fell eight places…only to make most of them up in 2026. By the same token, UC Berkeley fell out of the Top 10 in 2025…only to return a year later.

Most business schools get dinged one year or another in U.S. News. This year, Goizueta and Scheller are taking their turn.

WHY GOIZUETA & SCHELLER LOST GROUND

A year ago, P&Q was celebrating the I-75 corridor, which provided access to increasingly-popular programs like Emory Goizueta and Georgia Tech Scheller – not to mention Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School and the University of Georgia’s Terry College. Call it a southern explosion, with four Top 30 business schools located within a four-hour radius. In reality, little has changed with these schools. They all remain Top 30 programs. If history is any indication, they will bounce back – rankings-wise – in the next cycle.

What happened to change the fortunes of Goizueta and Scheller? Very little…and that’s the point. In a year where MBA placement declined, Goizueta experienced the brunt more than most. At graduation, just 66.3% of its 2025 graduates had landed jobs, down from 79.9% the year before. After three months, that number had increased to 80.7% – but nearly 9% below the figure from the Class of 2024. At the same time, Goizueta’s Recruiter Assessment Score dipped from 3.7 to 3.5. Combined, the Placement and Recruiter dimensions constituted nearly a third of the U.S. News MBA Ranking’s weight. While Goizueta showed minor improvement in other weighted dimensions, such as pay and acceptance rate, they just weren’t enough to offset the declines.

The Scheller College followed a similar pattern. Take placement for the Class of 2025. At graduation, Scheller’s employment rate stood at 66.7% – down from 80.1%. While three-month placement hit 85.6%, it still lagged behind the 91.9% rate achieved by the previous class. Like Goizueta, Scheller’s Recruitment Assessment Score slipped from 3.7 to 3.5 (even as its Peer Assessment Score rose by 0.1 of a point). Most damning, MBA Pay declined more glaringly than most, going from $175,184 to $163,531. Collectively, that’s a 52.5% share of the weight that ultimately sunk Scheller’s chance to hold its spot.

Dimension	Weight	UNC (2026)	UNC (2025)	Emory (2026)	Emory (2025)	GA Tech (2026)	GA Tech (2025)
Employment Rate At Graduation	7.0%	69.5%	73.9%	66.3%	79.9%	66.7%	80.1%
Employment Rate At 3 Months	13.0%	84.7%	84.8%	80.7%	89.5%	85.6%	91.9%
Mean Salary and Bonus	20.0%	$165,888	$172,086	$181,550	$181,374	$163,531	$175,184
Salary By Profession	10.0%	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA
Peer Assessment	12.5%	4.0	3.9	3.8	3.8	3.7	3.6
Recruiter Assessment	12.5%	3.5	3.7	3.5	3.7	3.5	3.7
Median GMAT/GRE	13.0%	NA	710	NA	710	NA	700
Median GPA	10.0%	3.50	3.40	3.50	3.50	3.30	3.40
Acceptance Rate	2.0%	37.9%	36.9%	33.2%	36.8%	17.9%	18.2%

Source: U.S. News & World Report

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A GAME OF INCHES

In contrast, UNC Kenan-Flagler’s graduation and three-month placement rates also declined…but just by 4.4% and 0.1% respectively. Kenan-Flagler graduate pay also fell – but by half the margin as Scheller. Like Goizueta, Kenan-Flagler gained 0.1 of a point in the Peer Assessment Survey and lost 0.2 of a point in the Recruiter Assessment. Like Scheller and Goizueta, Kenan-Flagler’s input remained steady against the previous year (though its undergraduate GPA improved from 3.4 to 3.5 with the incoming class).

Bottom line: There was little separating Kenan-Flagler at 21st from Goizueta (23rd) and Scheller (27th). Head-to-head, Goizueta grads enjoyed higher pay, an advantage negated by Kenan-Flagler scoring better in Peer Assessment and achieving higher placement rates. While Scheller enjoyed higher placement and lower acceptance rates, it couldn’t match Kenan-Flagler or Goizueta in Peer Assessment and Undergraduate GPA.

Advantage: Kenan-Flagler.

Alas, Goizueta and Scheller aren’t the only major players in Georgia. Look no further than the state’s flagship university, where the Terry College improved from 29th to 25th thanks to producing one of the highest placement rates among Top 25 schools (93.3% at the three-month mark). The same goes for North Carolina, where Duke University’s Fuqua School holds the #14 spot (after ranking anywhere from 11th to 13th over the previous six U.S. News rankings).

In other words, the state of business school education remains strong, regardless of whether you study in North Carolina or Georgia. If past is prologue, it will only take a few minor shifts to reshuffle where Kenan-Flagler, Goizueta, and Scheller land next year.

Next Page: UT-Dallas and Miami Herbert Make Statements

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