Although there are vocal concerns that the MBA degree’s popularity is about to hit its all-time low, the number of applications at world’s best business schools is still rising.
According to Ready4 ranking of the most popular business school programs, the first place is, unsurprisingly, taken by Harvard business school, and the second is secured by Stanford, Poets and Quants reports.
Among this year’s 25 best schools, there are four new ones: London School of Economics (17th), Cornell (19th), University of Michigan (24th) and Dartmouth (25th). Four other schools – namely, Boston College, Carnegie Mellon, Imperial College and USC – dropped out of the top 25 ranking.
The most ‘desirable’ business schools:
Rank | School | Avg. GMAT | % of Ready4 Users Indicate as a Top Choice |
1. | Harvard | 725 | 8.0% |
2. | Stanford | 732 | 6.0% |
3. | University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) | 730 | 4.0% |
4. | MIT (Sloan) | 716 | 4.0% |
5. | Indian School of Business | 704 | 3.3% |
6. | Columbia | 718 | 3.2% |
7. | London Business School | 715 | 3.0% |
8. | New York University (Stern) | 710 | 2.6% |
9. | INSEAD | 703 | 2.5% |
10. | University of California Berkeley (Haas) | 717 | 2.4% |
11. | University of Chicago (Booth) | 726 | NA |
12. | Northwestern (Kellogg) | 728 | NA |
13. | Indian Institute of Management | Varies | NA |
14. | Yale | 730 | NA |
15. | Duke (Fuqua) | 696 | NA |
16. | University of Oxford | 690 | NA |
17. | London School of Economics | 700 | NA |
18. | HEC Paris | 690 | NA |
19. | Cornell | 700 | NA |
20. | University of Cambridge | 690 | NA |
21. | National University of Singapore | 656 | NA |
22. | UCLA | 715 | NA |
23. | SP Jain Institute of Management | 650 | NA |
24. | University of Michigan Ann Arbor (Ross) | 708 | NA |
25. | Dartmouth (Tuck) | 717 | NA |
To make this ranking, Ready4 gathered data from both current and aspiring MBA students – this is why this technique is so reliable.
While Ready4 users register at the website, they have to fill in a list of ten business schools they would like to send an application to. The gathered data was obtained starting from November 2015, and 250,000 users took part in the survey resulting in the rankings. Among the participating users, 62% of the respondents were male. The rankings show the popularity percentage, acceptance rates and the medium GMAT results of every school.
Applications increase at world’s top business schools
So, what are the results of the Ready4 rankings? First of all, it looks like the best business schools have not dropped in popularity, even slightly. They even have a surge in applications: for instance, Yale’s School of Management’s number of applications increased by 45% since 2013. For MIT Sloan, and Berkeley Haas, the increase of students applying was 28% and 20.7%, respectively.
On average, the Ready4 respondents have almost 5 years of job experience, and most of them – 65% – are hoping to start b-school next year. Consequently, the rankings are showing data for the future 2020 and 2021 business school classes.
Of course, it’s not surprising in the least that Harvard, Stanford and Wharton turned out to be the most popular schools. Most of the top 25 schools were headquartered in cities and had large annual classes (more than 300 students). Additionally, most of these best programs were US-based.
Learn more about the most desirable business schools on MBA25 event in Bucharest!