The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and Stanford Graduate School of Business were jointly first in the 2024 US News MBA Ranking, outperforming its competitors.
Both institutions surpassed last year’s top-ranked school, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, which finished joint-third.
Stanford in particular fared admirably, rising from sixth position in 2023 to share the top spot. Wharton, meanwhile, rose to the top after losing the crown in 2023.
The performance of schools in the US News MBA Ranking is determined by a number of metrics, which are divided into three categories: placement success, quality evaluation, and student selectivity.
Placement success metrics include students’ post-graduation earnings potential and school employment rates. Admission rates, average GMAT scores, and average GPAs are all indicators of student selectivity. Quality assessment involves how corporate recruiters and other business school deans evaluate a program.
Stanford has the highest average salary of any institution in this year’s list, totaling $209,680 and including both wages and bonuses, which account for 20% of a school’s overall position.
Wharton also does well in terms of compensation, but its total of $201,296 is surpassed (narrowly) by several schools, including Chicago Booth, Dartmouth Tuck School of Business, University of Virginia Darden School of Business, and NYU Stern School of Business.
Several colleges outperform Stanford in terms of graduates’ employment rates three months after graduation. This indicator accounts for 13% of a school’s ranking, with 7% ascribed to the placement rate at graduation.
In this year’s ranking, Stanford’s placing of 82.8% is surpassed by all of the other top ten schools, with only Harvard Business School sharing a percentage below 90%.
Meanwhile, Wharton has a top-five placement rate. According to US News data, the institution assisted 94.2% of students in finding employment within three months of graduation.
A new criteria for 2024 assesses institutions based on pay success, split down by profession. This measure dives deeper into how typical incomes for graduates entering various key industries vary by institution. These industries include consulting, finance and accounting, general management, human resources, marketing and sales, information technology, and operations and logistics.
Stanford leads the pay by profession list, accounting for 10% of a school’s total weighting, followed by Wharton in second and Harvard in third.
According to student selectivity indicators, Stanford is the most competitive institution, with an admission rate of 8.4%. Harvard (13.2%) and MIT Sloan (17.7%) have the next closest scores among the top ten. Wharton’s admittance rate of 24.8% ranks among the top five most demanding colleges.
Among the student selectivity measures, a school’s acceptance rate is the least weighted at only 2%. Median GMAT scores (13%) and median GPAs (10%) have a substantial impact on a school’s performance.
Stanford and Wharton have the highest median GMAT scores, at 740. This is shared with the other top ten schools, which include Harvard and Kellogg.
Stanford has the highest median GPA of any school, at 3.8, followed by Harvard, which also has 3.8. Wharton scores somewhat lower, at 3.7. This places the Pennsylvania-based school level alongside Kellogg, MIT Sloan, and Yale in this criteria.
The Stanford MBA is the only program to receive a 4.7 out of five on both the peer and recruiter assessment polls, demonstrating its high regard. These metrics each account for 12.5% of a school’s total weighting.
Harvard is ranked second, with 4.7 for peer rating and 4.6 for recruiter score. Wharton’s peer assessment score of 4.6 and recruiter assessment of 4.5 puts it behind Stanford, Harvard, Kellogg, and MIT Sloan.
