Stanford GSB Cruises Into First In P&Q’s 2019-2020 MBA Ranking

A Wharton School classroom filled with MBA students. File photo

BIG MOVEMENTS OFTEN RESULT WHEN A SCHOOL LOSES OR GAINS A RANKING

Outside of the top 50, 21 full-time MBA programs had double-digit changes in their ranks. The biggest nose dive occurred at the University of San Diego which lost 19 places to rank 87th this year. The culprit: The school fell out of two major rankings, U.S. News, which had ranked its MBA program 79th best in 2018, and the Financial Times, which had ranked San Diego’s MBA 50th best in the U.S. in 2018.

The school experiencing the biggest boost upward was also in San Diego, the University of California at San Diego’s Rady School of Management. Rady jumped 23 places to rank 71st, up from 94th a year earlier. The school gained a U.S. News ranking, coming in at a rank of 69th this year, and also improved its standing in the Bloomberg Businessweek ranking from 63rd to 60th.

A quick look at our ranking tables makes obvious the reasons for bigger movements up or down the list. More often than not, double-digit changes on the P&Q list occur when one of more of the most influential rankings drop or add an MBA program. The University of Connecticut’s School of Business in Storrs suffered that fate, dropping 17 places after losing rankings from both Forbes and the Financial Times. So even though the school’s had improved in both U.S. News and Businessweek, its disappearance from two other major lists hurt its overall position in P&Q’s composite ranking.

On the up side, Iowa State’s Ivy College of Business turned in a stellar rankings year, thanks to U.S. News. The school’s full-time MBA program gained 32 places to rank 47th in U.S. News. That fact alone helped the school rise by 21 places to rank 71st this year, from 94th a year ago.

(See the following page for the full 2019-2020 MBA ranking)