In what should be good news for applicants to MBA programs in the United States, acceptance rates are on the rise at the top 25 B-schools with only a few exceptions. It essentially means that the schools will be offering admission to a larger percent of applicants. 

Acceptance Rate is the ratio of the number of admissions offers made by the business school and the total number of applications. The lower the acceptance rate, the more difficult it would be for you to get admission.

As many as 22 of the schools notched up an increase in acceptance rate compared to previous years with only three of them recording a drop, according to an analysis by Poets & Quants of the 2018-19 admission data.

However, this does not mean that the schools are willing to hand out admissions to all and sundry. The selection process remains as tough as ever and you need to show great academic and professional achievements to figure in the admission shortlist.

Acceptance Rates for the Top Five B-Schools

Among the top 5 schools, Stanford GSB had an acceptance rate of 6.7% moving up from 6.3% in 2017-18. MIT Sloan was the only one to buck the trend at 11.5% compared to 12.1% last year. Harvard Business School recorded 12% (11% last year), UC-Berkeley Haas 17.7% (12%), a 47.5% jump from the previous year. Columbia Business School recorded 19.1% (16%).

Acceptance Rates for the top 25 B-Schools

Acceptance rates also maintained a rising trend among most of the top 25 schools.  Wharton recorded an acceptance rate of 22%, Chicago Booth 22.5%, Duke Fuqua  22.9%, Yale School of Management 25.2%, Northwestern Kellogg and UCLA Anderson at 26% each. NYU Stern School was at 26.1%.

Booth saw the least change from 22.9% in the previous year. In the case of Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, the acceptance rate dipped from 39% to 37.3%.

Seven Schools See Increase in Admission Offers

Georgetown McDonough School of Business saw a 10% rise in acceptance to 60.5%, UNC Kenan-Flagler notched up 52.9%, a 15% increase from 46%; Indiana University’s Kelley School had a 30% rise, from 38% to 49.4%.

Emory University’s Goizueta Business School went up from 37% to 44%, an 18.9% increase; Carnegie Mellon Tepper School recorded an 18.6% increase, from 35% to 41.5%; Cornell Johnson, a 16% rise, from 33% to 38.3% and Texas-Austin McCombs School from 34% to 38%, an 11.8% rise.

However, the biggest change was for Dartmouth’s Tuck School which went up from 22.7% to 34.5%, an increase of 52%. UC-Berkeley follows with an acceptance rate of 50%, Yale SOM from 20% to 25.2%, a rise of 26%. Kellogg from 20.7% to 26%, a 25,6% increase.

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