INSEAD, Stanford Top Financial Times World MBA ‘17 Ranking
For the second year in a row, France and Singapore business school INSEAD topped the annual Financial Times‘ list of the world’s best full-time MBA programs. INSEAD was followed by the Stanford Graduate School of Business and The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
The methodology behind the construction of the Financial Times world full-time MBA list is simple:
The ranking is based on surveys of the business schools and their graduates of 2013. MBAs are assessed according to the career progression of alumni, the school’s idea generation and the diversity of students and faculty.
Meaning, that the list isn’t simply ordered by the annual average salary of those graduates surveyed, nor just isolating their individual approval of their time with the schools. For instance, despite being second on the list overall, Stanford GSB grads earned the highest average annual salary ($195,000). The reason INSEAD came ahead, despite a near $30,000 annual difference, was much higher rankings in the categories of value (11th overall) and international mobility.
For the first time in nine years Harvard Business School fell out of the top three while the London Business School fell to sixth, its lowest spot in 14 years. This also marks for the first time in the history of the ranking that LBS was not the first UK school on the list, supplanted by the University of Cambridge: Judge. As well, not listed in the top ten for the first time in 10 years—perhaps surprisingly—is the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Judge in particular may be the most outstanding winner of the ranking keeping in mind that just five years ago the school ranked 26th overall. Judge’s accolades stem from the tremendous value (1st overall). Tuition at the school is the cheapest among all selected in the top 15 and the opportunity cost was considered the 2nd best in the world.
Fifty-one U.S. schools managed a spot on the ranking (up from 47 in ‘16), including the Rutgers Business School, which was the highest new entrant at 70. The Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame saw the biggest increase from the previous year, moving up 16 spots to 60th overall (the school jumped 13 spots the previous year as well).
However, Canadian schools fell back slightly with only three making the top 100. The Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto was the highest-ranking of the three at 65th.
Read the entire list and analysis here.
London Business School Leads 2016 Bloomberg BusinessWeek International MBA Rankings
London Business School (LBS) climbed to the very top spot on Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s ‘Best International Business Schools of 2016‘ list, released yesterday, up a notch from last year’s second-place showing. INSEAD, which has campuses in France, Singapore and Abu Dhabi, followed right behind, inching up from number three last year to second place this year. The United Kingdom’s other powerhouse business schools, Oxford’s Saïd Business School and Cambridge’s Judge Business School, fell in line at third and fourth respectively, representing a three-spot jump for Saïd over last year and a four-spot jump for Judge. Spain’s IESE also experienced gains year over year, sidling up two spots from last year’s seventh place to round out this year’s top five.
But as some schools inched up, others fell—most notably Western University’s Ivey Business School in Canada, which plummeted from the number one spot last year to 10th in 2016. Spain’s IE Business School and Switzerland’s International Institute for Management Development (IMD) each slipped two spots, to sixth and seventh this year. But Italy’s SDA Bocconi School of Management sauntered up four spots from 12th last year to land comfortably within the top 10 this year, at number eight. And Melbourne Business School has perhaps the most cause for celebration. The Australian school shot up a whopping 14 places to come in at number nine.
Like Bloomberg BW’s U.S. MBA rankings, released last month, its international MBA rankings are compiled using a methodology that assesses schools based on five factors: a survey of MBA recruiters, weighted at 35 percent; an alumni survey, weighted at 30 percent; a survey of the 2016 graduating class, weighted at 15 percent; the school’s placement rate, weighted at 10 percent, and the starting compensation for the class of 2016, weighted at 10 percent.
What this means, as the magazine points out, is that “it’s possible to rank highly without knocking every category out of the park.” Case in point, INSEAD came in second overall even though it ranked a meager 25th (out of 31) for job placement. (Bloomberg BW measures job placement as the percentage of graduates who land full-time employment within three months of graduation out of those seeking it—the figure reported by INSEAD was 81.6 percent, compared to an average 85.9 percent among all schools).
In terms of pay growth enjoyed by graduates of the 31 schools included in Bloomberg BW’s list, students came in at an average salary of $50,000, jumped to an average starting salary of $90,000 for their first job out of school and reported an average salary of $141,750 six to eight years out from graduation. The average MBA debt taken on by graduates across all ranked schools, meanwhile, was $40,000.
At a glance, here are the top 10 best international MBA programs in 2016 as ranked by Bloomberg BW:
- London Business School
- INSEAD
- Oxford (Saïd)
- Cambridge (Judge)
- IESE
- IE
- IMD
- SDA Bocconi
- Melbourne
- Western (Ivey)
As always, those of us here at MetroMBA encourage applicants to use rankings as just one of many means of evaluating which MBA program is the best fit to their individual needs and goals.
This article was republished with permission from Clear Admit.
Amid Roller Coaster Rides for Some, HBS Stays Atop Bloomberg BusinessWeek Ranking
For the second consecutive year, Harvard Business School (HBS) tops the Bloomberg BusinessWeek annual ranking of MBA programs—released today—making it one of the few leading schools that didn’t experience shifts in a list that holds lots of changes this year over last.
UC Davis Full-Time MBA Ranked Among Nation’s Best 20 Years Running
UC Davis’ Graduate School of Management’s Full-Time MBA program was ranked among the premier programs for the 20th year in a row, according to a press release from the school. U.S. News & World Report ranked the graduate business schools and released their list on March 10. UC Davis’ program came in at 48 out of 464. Part of what made UC Davis rank so high was their selectivity of applicants (top 10), their average GMAT score (688 up from 685), and their record MBA starting salary and bonus ($99,952 up from $88,301). Continue reading…
