Bloomberg Businessweek’s 2023-2024 Best B-Schools ranks the top business schools globally by region, charting assessments of programs in the U.S., Europe, Asia-Pacific region, and Canada through a rigorous analysis of data and survey responses.
This year, the ranking covers 110 full-time MBA programs. To qualify, programs had to be taught primarily in English. Bloomberg Businessweek surveyed 6,574 students, 10,347 alumni, and 713 employers, and also weighed compensation and employment data to determine schools’ scores.
The top five of the U.S. business schools ranking sees the same schools as last year’s, with some slight shuffling. The Stanford Graduate School of Business maintained the top spot for the fifth year in a row, scoring an 86.8 (out of 100) overall. Chicago Booth held onto second place as Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business moved up to third to tie with UVA’s Darden School of Business. Columbia Business School rounds out the top five, up from its eighth position last year.
Harvard Business School, which had tied for second last year, now occupies the sixth spot. Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management slipped from fourth to seventh with a score of 84.9 this year. The Wharton School follows at eighth. The University of Michigan Ross School of Business cracked the top 10, moving up from fifteenth to ninth this year. MIT’s Sloan School of Management stays in the top ten, but moved down from sixth to tenth.
Clear Admit’s Alex Brown notes, “While Bloomberg’s MBA ranking does a decent job in identifying the top 25 programs, they do not do a reasonable job of getting the specific order right. No one can really argue against Stanford being ranked number 1, but to suggest HBS ranks number six and Wharton number eight does not reflect the market. Thankfully, MBA candidates tend to understand how best to use these rankings, and are able to do their own research to get a better sense of which programs belong in which tiers.”
Here is a quick glance at this year’s U.S. top 10 (with the addition of 2022-23 rankings in parentheses).
| Ranking | U.S. School |
|---|---|
| 1 | Stanford University Graduate School of Business (1) |
| 2 | University of Chicago Booth School of Business (2, tie) |
| 3 (tie) | Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business (5) |
| 3 (tie) | University of Virginia Darden School of Business (9) |
| 5 | Columbia Business School (8) |
| 6 | Harvard Business School (2, tie) |
| 7 | Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management (4) |
| 8 | The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (7) |
| 9 | University of Michigan Ross School of Business (15) |
| 10 | MIT Sloan School of Management (6) |
In regards to the ranking of European business schools, SDA Bocconi claimed the top spot after Switzerland’s IMD had held onto the position for three consecutive years. IESE Business School claimed second place while IMD landed in third. INSEAD occupies fourth place followed by London Business School in fifth.
Here is a look at this year’s European top 10 (with 2022-23 rankings in parentheses).
| Ranking | European School |
|---|---|
| 1 | SDA Bocconi (5) |
| 2 | IESE Business School (3) |
| 3 | IMD (1) |
| 4 | INSEAD (2) |
| 5 | London Business School (4) |
| 6 | IE Business School (11) |
| 7 | Mannheim (7) |
| 8 | St. Gallen (6) |
| 9 | Cambridge Judge Business School (8) |
| 10 | Oxford Saïd Business School (9) |
A note on methodology. Bloomberg Businessweek surveys graduating students, recent alumni, and companies that recruit MBAs for their U.S. business school ranking. The surveys are designed to index five key components of a U.S. business school education: compensation, learning, networking, entrepreneurship and diversity (for U.S. schools only). The rankings weigh each index according to the survey respondents, asking students, alumni, and recruiters which aspects of their business school experience mattered most. The indexes for U.S. schools this year were calculated as follows: compensation, 37.5%; learning, 26.3%; entrepreneurship, 11.4%; networking, 17.8%; and diversity, 7.1%. For more about the surveys and other factors in the methodology, see here.
