The Economist 2019 full-time MBA ranking is finally out, with the University of Chicago Booth School of Business—once again—cracking the top spot. This marks the second consecutive year the school stayed on the top of the list.
The news comes out just a few months after Chicago Booth earned the top spot on the biennial Forbes business school ranking, continuing a positive trend for the Windy City business school.
Harvard Business School trailed Booth for the second overall spot, up from third last year. In third place—and what may be the biggest surprise winner of the rankings—is HEC Paris, taking a monumental jump from 13th overall in 2018.
The Economist 2019 MBA Ranking: Shaking Up The Top 10
While the majority of full-time MBA programs in the top 10 are the same as the previous year, two schools managed to secure new top 10 spots: the aforementioned HEC Paris and the University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business, which rose from 11th last year to 7th this year.
Here’s how the rest of the top 10 shook out:
| School | 2019 Ranking | 2018 Ranking |
|---|---|---|
| Chicago Booth | 1 | 1 |
| Harvard Business School | 2 | 3 |
| HEC Paris | 3 | 13 |
| Northwestern Kellogg | 4 | 2 |
| The Wharton School | 5 | 4 |
| UCLA Anderson | 6 | 8 |
| UC Berkeley Haas | 7 | 11 |
| Stanford GSB | 8 | 5 |
| Michigan Ross | 9 | 7 |
| IESE | 10 | 6 |
Clear Admit and MetroMBA Co-founder, Graham Richmond, says, “The Economist‘s MBA ranking has been known to raise more than a few eyebrows in light of how it differs from the likes of U.S. News, Bloomberg, and the Financial Times—specifically in that there always seem to be at least a handful of ‘surprises.’ This may be related to the methodology’s reliance on student feedback—or ‘customer satisfaction.’ With that said, the ranking has increasingly begun aligning with some of the other major rankings out there and seems a bit less eccentric with each ranking season that passes.”
HEC Paris and UC Berkeley Haas bumped both UVA Darden and the Columbia Business School out of the top 10. The schools took the most notable falls in the top 20, with UVA Darden slipping from 9th last year to 16th overall, and Columbia moving from 10th to 15th. In addition, the Yale School of Management fell out of the top 20 entirely, trailing from 14th to 21st overall this year.
New International Schools Join The Ranking
A bevy of new additions rounded out the back-end of the Economist 2019 full-time MBA Ranking. Among the all-new additions are: the University of Strathclyde Business School (100th); the University of Glasgow Adam Smith Business School (99th); Yonsei University in South Korea (95th); the International University of Japan Graduate School of International Management (94th); the University College Dublin Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business (90th); the University of Exeter Business School (86th); the International University of Monaco (71st); and the European School of Management and Technology (65th).
The inclusion of Yonsei University is a fairly remarkable note, given the fact that no South Korean MBA program has cracked The Economist ranking in five years. Yonsei previously made the list every year from 2011 to 2014.
While many international schools seem to be doing better than ever, U.S. schools still maintained a tight grip on the top spots.
Richmond says, “One final thing to note is that 23 of the top 30 schools are U.S. MBA programs, which suggests that the U.S. is still home to the lion’s share of the very best business schools.”
For a full breakdown of the brand new rankings, click here.