The Wharton School has regained its number one position after slipping to third place in 2023, and Stanford shot up to first place from its position in sixth last year.
Last year’s first place, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, dropped down to joint third place with Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management which placed second last year.
MIT Sloan rounds out the top five best US MBA programs, coming in fifth.
US News & World Report ranks the best business schools in the USA each year based on metrics including graduate salaries and bonuses, employment rates, GMAT scores and GPAs, and MBA acceptance rates.
Best Business Schools in the USA: M7 Business Schools dominate the top 10
The top five schools that make up the best business schools in the US are all members of the elite group known as the M7 business schools. The other members of that club, Harvard Business School, and Columbia Business School, sit in sixth and joint 12th place. The M7 are widely regarded as being among the best business schools in the world.
Elsewhere in the top 10 are Yale School of Management, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, and NYU Stern School of Business in joint seventh, while Dartmouth Tuck and Virginia Darden rank 10th in the US, according to US News.
The success of this year’s winners, Wharton and Stanford, can be put down to both schools’ impressive overall performance at both the enrollment and graduation stage. Both schools boast top average GMAT scores and comes first and second in both average base salary across the top 10.
They also perform well for diversity with Wharton coming first and Stanford coming second for percentage of minority students and Wharton being the only school of the top 10 with more women than men in its class.
Stanford’s latest graduating class has an average GMAT score of 738 with an average GPA of 3.8. The average base salary of graduates is $197,000, with the highest earning landing an eye-watering salary of $500,000.
The US News MBA ranking can be viewed as the most definitive list of the best business schools in the USA.
US News Top 10 MBA programs in the US
Graduates from joint third-placed Kellogg earn an average base salary of $172,250, and 85.6 of graduates at graduation. The school has an average undergraduate GPA of 3.6 and an average GMAT of 731.
Last year’s number one and also joint-third this year, Chicago Booth’s class has an average GMAT of 728 and an average undergraduate GPA of 3.4. Graduates from the MBA program have excellent career prospects, with 89.3% being employed at graduation with an average base salary of $175,352—the third highest of the top 10.
Virginia Darden has the highest employment rate among the top 10 at 90.4%.
When it comes to the most competitive US MBA program, Stanford sits on top. The school has an acceptance rate of just 8.4% and is followed by Harvard (13.2%) and MIT Sloan (17.8%) in second and third, respectively.
Read: How Much Does The Wharton MBA Cost
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US MBA programs: Gains & Losses
Columbia Business School will be disappointed to have placed out of the top 10 for a second year in a row. The school sits in 12th place this year, joint with University of Michigan Ross—another school that dropped out of the top 10. Meanwhile Chicago Booth dropped from first to joint-third this year.
Darden had a good year, placing in the top 10 after ranking 14th for the last two years. The same is true for Berkeley Haas which fought its way back into the top 10 after dropping out of it in last year's ranking.
There are rarely seismic shifts at the top end of the US News MBA Ranking, but some lower-ranked schools made significant gains this year.
The University of Kansas climbed 18 places to 60th this year, while there were two schools that made strong gains to jump into the top 30: Washington University in St Louis Olin climbed 11 places, from 37th to 26th, and Ohio State Fisher jumped from 44th to 30th this year.
There were some significant movements further down the rankings, such as the University of Colorado—Boulder Leeds which fell 11 places from 60th to 71st.
Best business schools for business analytics, finance & more
The US News MBA ranking also ranks business schools across several specialisms in its Specialty Rankings, although these do not contribute to the overall ranking.
According to US News, the best business schools in the USA for business analytics are MIT Sloan, Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business, and the Wharton School. Harvard, Michigan Ross, and Stanford rank best for best general management programs.
Babson College's Olin Graduate School of Business ranks best for entrepreneurship and is followed by Stanford and MIT Sloan. The best US business schools for finance are Wharton, Chicago Booth, and NYU Stern.
If you're after a career in accounting, the best business schools ranked by US News are McCombs School of Business of the University of Texas at Austin, Wharton, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Whereas if marketing is your strong point, you might want to look at Kellogg, Wharton, or Michigan Ross, ranked the best three business schools in the US for the discipline by US News.
Michigan State University's Eli Broad College of Business offers the best MBA for supply chain management and logistics, and if you're after a career in real estate, Wharton is your best bet.
US News MBA Ranking: 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2017
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