Both schools leapfrogged last year’s number-one ranked school, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management which placed joint-third.
Stanford in particular performed well, jumping from sixth place in 2023 to share the top spot. Wharton meanwhile rose to the top after losing the crown in 2023.
Stanford, Wharton: US News MBA Ranking Analysis
The performance of schools in the US News MBA Ranking is based on a number of factors, which can be split by categories of placement success, quality assessment, and student selectivity.
Placement success metrics include students’ earning potential after graduation and schools’ employment rates. Student selectivity includes admission rates, average GMAT scores, and average GPAs. Quality assessment includes how corporate recruiters and other business school deans assess a program.
Placement Success
Stanford boasts the highest average pay—consisting of both salaries and bonuses and worth 20% of a school’s overall position—of all schools in this year's ranking, amounting to $209,680.
Wharton also performs well for pay, however its figure of $201,296 is exceeded (narrowly) by a number of schools including Chicago Booth, Dartmouth Tuck School of Business, University of Virginia Darden School of Business, and NYU Stern School of Business.
Stanford is outperformed by several schools when it comes to the employment rate of graduates three months after leaving the program. This metric is worth 13% of a school’s ranking, while 7% is also attributed to the placement rate at the point of graduation.
In this year’s ranking, Stanford’s placement of 82.8% is beaten by all of the other schools in the top 10, with only Harvard Business School sharing a rate below 90%.
Wharton meanwhile achieves a placement rate that ranks among the top five. The school helped 94.2% of students land a role within three months of graduation, as per the US News data.
A new metric for 2024 ranks schools according to their salary performance broken down by profession. This metric delves deeper into how the average salaries of grads entering several key industries compare between schools. These industries are: consulting, finance and accounting, general management, human resources, marketing and sales, information technology, and operations and logistics.
Worth 10% of a school's overall weighting, Stanford tops the salary by profession ranking, followed by Wharton in second place and Harvard in third.
Student Selectivity
Within the student selectivity metrics, Stanford is revealed to be the most competitive school with an admission rate of 8.4%. The next closest scores among the top 10 are achieved by Harvard (13.2%) and MIT Sloan (17.7%). Wharton’s admission rate of 24.8% places it among the top five most competitive schools.
At just 2%, a school’s admission rate has the least weighting among the student selectivity metrics. Median GMAT scores (13%) and median GPAs (10%) contribute significantly more to a school’s performance.
Both Stanford and Wharton achieve the highest median GMAT scores, at 740. This is shared with other top 10 schools including Harvard and Kellogg.
At 3.8 Stanford also has the highest median GPA among all schools, alongside Harvard which also has 3.8. Wharton is marginally below this at 3.7. This places the Pennsylvania-based school level with the likes of Kellogg, MIT Sloan, and Yale for this metric.
Quality Assessment
Demonstrating the high esteem within which the Stanford MBA is held, it is the only program to achieve a score of 4.7 out of five for both the peer assessment and recruiter assessment surveys. These metrics are each worth 12.5% of a school’s overall weighting.
Harvard places second, with a 4.7 for peer assessment and a 4.6 for the recruiter score. Wharton’s score of 4.6 for peer assessment and 4.5 for recruiter assessment places it below Stanford, Harvard, Kellogg, and MIT Sloan.
2024 US News MBA Ranking
*Placement rate three months after graduation
READ: The Best Business Schools In The USA | US News MBA Ranking
