The Wharton School and Stanford Graduate School of Business are the greatest business schools in the United States, according to US News & World Report.
The Wharton School has regained its top spot after falling to third rank in 2023, while Stanford has risen from sixth to first place.
The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, which finished first last year, now shares third position with Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, which finished second.
MIT Sloan rounds out the top five best US MBA programs, ranking fifth.
Each year, US News & World Report ranks the top business schools in the USA based on factors such as graduate incomes, employment rates, GMAT scores, GPAs, and MBA admittance rates.
The top five US business schools belong to the elite M7 club. Harvard Business School and Columbia Business School are the other two members of the group, ranking sixth and tied 12th, respectively. The M7 is largely recognized as one of the top business schools in the world.
Yale School of Management, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, and NYU Stern School of Business are in joint seventh place, while Dartmouth Tuck and Virginia Darden are ranked tenth in the United States, according to US News.
The success of this year’s winners, Wharton and Stanford, can be attributed to their strong total enrollment and graduation rates. Both schools have high average GMAT scores and rank first and second in average base income among the top ten.
They also do well in terms of diversity, with Wharton ranking first and Stanford second in terms of minority students, and Wharton being the only top-ten institution with more women than males in its class.
Stanford’s most recent graduating class had an average GMAT score of 738 and an average GPA of 3.8. Graduates’ average base pay is $197,000, with the best earning a staggering $500,000.
The US News MBA rating can be regarded as the authoritative list of the best business schools in the United States.
Kellogg graduates earn an average base income of $172,250, accounting for 85.6 percent of all graduates. The school has an average undergraduate GPA of 3.6 and an average GMAT score of 731.
Chicago Booth’s class was ranked first last year and is now joint-third this year, with an average GMAT of 728 and an average undergraduate GPA of 3.4. Graduates of the MBA program have strong employment prospects, with 89.3% employed upon graduation and an average base salary of $175,352—the third highest among the top ten.
Virginia Darden has the highest employment rate in the top ten, with 90.4%.
Stanford ranks first among the most competitive MBA programs in the United States. The institution has an acceptance rate of only 8.4%, with Harvard (13.2%) and MIT Sloan (17.8%) ranking second and third, respectively.