HBS Shares Top Rank With Booth in U.S. News Best Business Schools 2019

Harvard Business School (HBS) retains the number 1 spot in the Best Business Schools 2019 Ranking by the U.S. News & World Report in a tie with University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

With no claimant for the second spot, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania that shared the first place with HSB in the 2018 ranking, gets pushed to the third place this time. Stanford retained the 4^th rank while MIT Sloan slipped one spot to the 5^th place.

In Student Selectivity (weighted by 0.25), Mean GMAT and GRE scores (0.1625) were taken into consideration. This year for the first time, MBA programs that reported that less than 50% of their full-time fall 2017 entering students’ submitted average GMAT scores and average GRE quantitative and verbal scores received less credit for those test scores in the rankings.

Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University also dropped to the 6^th rank from the 4^th spot in the previous year. Berkeley Haas retained the 7^th rank in a tie with University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. With no claimant for the 8^th place, Columbia Business School retains the 9^th rank. Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth is ranked at 10.

Survey Methodology

For the rankings, U.S. News had conducted a survey in fall 2017 and early 2018 of all the 480 MBA programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB) drawing responses from 387 schools.

Of these, 127 were ranked because they provided enough of the required data on their full-time MBA program needed to calculate the full-time MBA rankings, based on a weighted average of several indicators.

In Quality Assessment (weighted by 0.40), Peer assessment score (0.25) was sought in fall 2017 from business school deans and directors of accredited MBA programs who 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.” It drew responses from 40% of those surveyed.

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.

Recruiter assessment score (0.15) was sought from corporate recruiters and company contacts, who were asked to rate all full-time programs on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (outstanding). This year for the first 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.

Placement Success (weighted by 0.35) included Mean starting salary and bonus (0.14); Employment rates for full-time MBA program graduates.

In Student Selectivity (weighted by 0.25), Mean GMAT and GRE scores (0.1625) were taken into consideration. This year for the first time, MBA programs that reported that less than 50% of their full-time fall 2017 entering students’ submitted average GMAT scores and average GRE quantitative and verbal scores received less credit for those test scores in the rankings.

In the overall ranking, data were standardized about their means. The 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 2017 full-time MBA graduates seeking employment.

For a school to have its employment data considered in the ranking model, at least 50% of its 2017 full-time MBA graduates needed to be seeking work. MBA programs that did not meet either of the above employment criteria are listed as Unranked.