Earlier in November, another prestigious publication released its new ranking of the best business schools in the US. While MBA rankings are not the only measure that can be used by business professionals to assess the most appropriate programme for them, they can be a useful first step.
Main takeaways
In 2019-20, Stanford Graduate Business School topped the ranking for a second consecutive time. The school also took the first spot in two of the ranking’s indexes – Compensation (post-MBA) and Entrepreneurship. The other two indexes measure Learning and Networking and were topped by the Raymond A. Mason School of Business and Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business respectively.
Tuck also impressed with a jump of 17 places to take the second spot in the overall ranking. Harvard Business School, Chicago Booth School of Business, and Darden School of Business follow closely and round up the top five.
Apart from Tuck School of Business, 13 other universities managed to climb the ranking and achieve a remarkable double-digit increase in their position. According to John Byrne’s analysis for Poets&Quants, the University of Florida is among the biggest winners in this year’s Bloomberg Businessweek ranking as its Full-time MBA reached #32. This is a jump of 23 places from last year’s #55.
Meet top North American business schools in a city near you.
Bloomberg uses 2019-2020 as a time stamp for this ranking because the data was analysed and published in 2019 with the intention of helping prospective MBA applicants make their choice in 2020.
Methodology behind the ranking
The best judges of MBA programmes are graduating students, recent alumni, and companies that recruit MBAs. And we want the best answers. Are schools offering what millennial students need? Are recent graduates able to leverage what they’ve learned and tap into their schools’ networks? What do businesses value most in recruits?
According to Bloomberg Businessweek, this is the main premise of the ranking. When gathering data, the publication took into account interviews with business school deans, professors, administrators, and analysts. It also distributed more than 26,804 surveys to MBA students, alumni, and recruiters. Finally, schools provided employment data.
As a result of this process, the ranking used four indexes to assess US MBA programmes – Compensation, Learning, Networking, and Entrepreneurship. The index that carries the most weight for the final score is Compensation and it encompasses measures such as “pay right after graduation”, “percentage of students employed three months after graduation”, “percentage of a class receiving a signing bonus”, and others.
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The ranking enables school candidates to customise their MBA search. “Prospective students can filter school choices by geography, compare schools by the median salaries earned by graduates, and discover where industries recruit their MBA hires and how much they pay them,” the publication explains. Professionals who would like to better understand the methodology behind the ranking can find a detailed description on Bloomberg’s website.
New functionalities
After the 2018 ranking came out, Bloomberg Businessweek researched different ways to improve its methodology and took inspiration from deans, professors, administrators, analysts, students, and alumni from 36 schools. As a result, the new ranking features additional tools that could ease candidates’ MBA search. They can now see the class makeup of each school (including the top five nationalities) as well as a school’s position compared to last year’s ranking.
MBA prospects who need a more in-depth look into the study experience of particular schools can explore another factor which is usually overlooked by rankings – university culture. A new tool, called the Cultural Fit Test, enables you to identify the top three schools where you are most likely to fit in. You can even compare your cultural profile directly with the profile of your desired school. The survey, which has been pioneered by the AI-driven platform Unimy, features North American business schools as well as top accredited institutions from around the world.
Find your school fit in just five minutes.
Top industries for US MBA grads
Are you wondering which sectors hire the most MBA graduates in the US? You can get an overview in the table below thanks to Bloomberg Businessweek’s latest ranking. Prospective candidates can also go a step further and see the schools where companies from a particular industry recruit.
Results per industry from the 2019-20 ranking
|
Industry |
Schools |
Number hired |
|
Consulting |
85 |
2,252 |
|
Financial |
88 |
2,127 |
|
Technology |
86 |
2,117 |
|
Consumer |
75 |
666 |
|
Healthcare |
77 |
708 |
|
Manufacturing |
72 |
509 |
|
Energy |
57 |
256 |
|
Real estate |
53 |
294 |
|
Retail |
49 |
212 |
|
Media/Entertainment |
39 |
171 |
|
Nonprofits |
40 |
135 |
|
Transportation |
36 |
125 |
|
Government |
33 |
83 |
|
Hospitality |
25 |
55 |
Read: The MBA Skills Most Valued by Employers
University rankings can be a great source of information if you are headed to business school, especially when they are used in combination with other measures. As much as rankings aim to be objective, your final MBA choice still depends entirely on you and your preferences.
