Wharton Pips Harvard To Claim 1st Rank In US News Best Business Schools Ranking 2020

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania has pushed Harvard Business School (HBS) to the third rank to return to the top position in the U.S. News & World Report Best Business Schools Ranking 2020.

At number 2 is Stanford Graduate School of Business. Harvard ties for the 3^rd spot with MIT Sloan School of Management and the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

• Wharton climbs to number one in the rankings pushing HBS to the 3^rd spot it held in 2019. Stanford climbs to 2^nd rank from its 4^th
• Harvard ties for the 3^rd spot with MIT Sloan School of Management and the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.
• Sloan had risen from the 5^th spot while Booth slipped from the number one rank it held in a tie with HBS in the previous year.
• The rankings are based on a survey conducted in fall 2018 and early 2019 covering all the 475 MBA programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB). A total of 367 responded.

Stanford has climbed from the 4^th rank in 2019 and Sloan from the 5^th spot. Booth has slipped from the number one rank it held with HBS in the previous year.

With no claimants for the 4^th and 5^th ranks, three schools, namely, Columbia University Business School, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and UCA Berkeley Haas.

The 7^th and 8^th ranks too do not have any claimants. In the 9^th slot is the Yale School of Management. The 10^th rank is a tie between the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and Michigan Ross.

Ranking Methodology

The rankings are based on a survey conducted in fall 2018 and early 2019 covering all the 475 MBA programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB). A total of 367 responded.

Of these, 131 were ranked as they provided enough data on their full-time MBA program needed to calculate the full-time MBA rankings.

To gather the peer assessment data, U.S. News asked deans, program directors and senior faculty to judge the academic quality of programs in their field on a scale of 1 (marginal) to 5 (outstanding).

In business, education, engineering, law and medicine, U.S. News also surveyed professionals who hire new graduates. The schools supplied the names of the surveyed professionals.

In both the full-time MBA and part-time MBA program rankings for the first time, U.S. News added the GRE analytical writing score into the full-time MBA and part-time MBA ranking methodologies. Previously, only the GRE quantitative and verbal scores were used.

Different output measures are available for different fields. In business, for example, U.S. News uses starting salaries and new MBAs’ ability to find jobs upon graduation or three months later.

To arrive at a school’s rank, U.S. News examined the data for each quality indicator and then standardized the value of each indicator about its mean. The final scores were rescaled so that the highest-scoring school was assigned 100; the other schools’ scores were recalculated as a percentage of that top score. The scores were then rounded to the nearest whole number, and schools were placed in descending order.

Every school’s performance is presented relative to those with which it is compared. A school with an overall score of 100 did not necessarily top out on every indicator; it accumulated the highest composite score.

A school’s rank reflects the number of schools that sit above it. If three schools are tied at No. 1, the next school will be ranked No. 4, not No. 2. Tied schools are listed alphabetically.

If a school or program is listed as Rank Not Published, that means that U.S. News calculated a numerical rank for that school or program but decided for editorial reasons not to publish it. Schools or programs marked as Rank Not Published are listed alphabetically.

In Quality Assessment (weighted by 0.40), Peer assessment score (0.25) was sought in fall 2018 from business school deans and directors of accredited MBA programs. They were asked to rate programs on a scale of 1 (marginal) to 5 (outstanding).

Those individuals who did not know enough about a school to evaluate it fairly were asked to mark “don’t know.” Of those surveyed, 45% responded. A school’s score is the average of all the respondents who rated it. Responses of “don’t know” counted neither for nor against a school.

For recruiter assessment score (0.15), as in previous years, U.S. News asked corporate recruiters and company contacts, whose names were supplied in summer 2018 by MBA programs previously ranked by it, to rate all full-time programs on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (outstanding).

Those individuals who did not know enough about a school to evaluate it fairly were asked to mark “don’t know.” A school’s score is the average of all the respondents who rated it in the three most recent years of survey results. Responses of “don’t know” counted neither for nor against a school.

This year for the second time, MBA programs that received fewer than a total of 10 recruiter and company contact ratings in the three most recent years of recruiter survey results received the lowest score in this indicator achieved by any ranked MBA program for the purposes of calculating the rankings.

These MBA programs display an “N/A” instead of a recruiter assessment score published on usnews.com. U.S. News collected both the peer assessment and recruiter assessment score data.

The employment rates for full-time MBA program graduates is for 2018 graduates of a full-time MBA program. Those not seeking jobs or for whom no job-seeking information is available are excluded.

In Placement Success (weighted by 0.35), the MBA CSEA Standards for Reporting Employment Statistics is taken as the basis for defining how MBA programs should report full-time MBA employment statistics and other career information, including starting base salaries, signing bonuses, and what proportion of MBA graduates have jobs at graduation and three months after.

The Mean starting salary and bonus (0.14) is the average starting salary and bonus of 2018 graduates of a full-time MBA program. Salary figures are based on the number of graduates who reported data. The mean signing bonus is weighted by the proportion of those graduates who reported a bonus because not everyone who reported a base salary figure reported a signing bonus.

The employment rates for full-time MBA program graduates is for 2018 graduates of a full-time MBA program. Those not seeking jobs or for whom no job-seeking information is available are excluded.

If the proportions of graduates for whom no job-seeking information is available and who are not seeking jobs are high, then the information is not used in calculating the rankings. Employment rates at graduation (0.07) and three months after graduation (0.14) are used in the ranking model.

Student Selectivity (weighted by 0.25) takes up the Mean GMAT and GRE scores (0.1625). This is the average GMAT score and average GRE quantitative, verbal and analytical writing scores of full-time MBA students entering in fall 2018.

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GMAT and GRE scores are used in the ranking model for MBA programs that reported both scores. Using the GRE scores allows U.S. News to take into account the admissions test scores of the entire entering full-time MBA class. This year for the first time, analytical writing scores as part of the methodology.

For the second consecutive year, MBA programs that reported that less than 50% of their full-time fall 2018 entering student submitted average GMAT scores and average GRE quantitative, verbal and analytical scores received less credit for those test scores in the rankings.

For Overall Rank, data were standardized about their means and standardized scores were weighted, totalled and rescaled so that the top school received 100; others received their percentage of the top score. Graduate business programs were then numerically ranked in descending order based on their scores.

To be included in the full-time MBA rankings, a program had to have 20 or more of its 2018 full-time MBA graduates seeking employment. For a school to have its employment data considered in the ranking model, at least 50% of its 2018 full-time MBA graduates needed to be seeking work.