December 11, 2018
NEW YORK (Tuesday, December 11, 2018)—Bloomberg Businessweek today announced its ranking of the best global business schools, encompassing 124 MBA programs across the Asia-Pacific region, Canada, Europe and the U.S. Stanford takes the number one spot, followed by Pennsylvania (Wharton) at number two and Harvard at number three. Regionally, CEIBS ranks number one in APAC; Western (Ivey) is number one in Canada; and IMD is ranked number one in Europe. Each school’s ranking is based on surveys of students, alumni and corporate recruiters, and takes into account compensation and job-placement data from each school.
The complete ranking of full-time global business schools is available here: bloomberg.com/2018bschools
Below are Bloomberg Businessweek’s top three full-time MBA programs across each region:
Online, readers can use interactive, easy-to-use tools to compare schools by geography, starting salaries, and by which industries hired alumni. Every MBA program has its own page highlighting the school-specific data collected by Bloomberg Businessweek, including the on-campus climate for groups that are traditionally underrepresented in MBA programs: women; international students; racial, religious, and ethnic minorities; people with disabilities; and people of all sexual orientations and gender identities.
Methodology:
Schools are ranked on four indexes: Compensation, Learning, Networking, and Entrepreneurship. Rather than assign weightings ourselves, as we had in the past, this year we surveyed students, alumni, and recruiters to learn what was most important to them. Their answers determined each index’s weighting. Combining that information with results of our other surveys and compensation data, we calculated the overall rankings.
We canvassed 10,473 students, up 11 percent from 2017. A total of 15,050 alumni took our survey, an increase of more than 50 percent from last year. The number of participating employers who recruit at business schools rose 71 percent, to 1,176.
All schools submitted employment data for the Class of 2017 following standards set by the MBA Career Services & Employer Alliance, a trade group founded in 1994 to collect consistent, comparable, peer-reviewed data. Schools were then given surveys to send to students who graduated from Oct. 1, 2017, to Sept. 30, 2018; alumni who graduated from Oct. 1, 2009, to Sept. 30, 2012; and employers that recruited graduates for full-time positions in 2016 and 2017. Schools had to abide by Bloomberg’s Code of Ethics, meant to ensure that all respondents participate voluntarily, without bias or pressure from school officials or their peers.
We set minimum thresholds for response rates based on the size of a school’s graduating and alumni classes, as well as for its employment data; schools that didn’t meet these thresholds were eliminated. Several schools met survey thresholds but not employment minimums. They aren’t included in our overall rankings but are listed in our index rankings.
The complete list of schools and a detailed methodology are available at bloomberg.com/2018bschools.
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About Bloomberg Businessweek
Bloomberg Businessweek offers a global perspective, timely insights, and unique stories to a new breed of business leader who has an original vision for the future and a willingness to think differently. Founded in 1929, the magazine is a trusted market leader with a global circulation of 600,000. Bloomberg Businessweek covers the business world like no one else can by drawing on more than 2,700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries.
Contacts:
Raina Dembner, rdembner@bloomberg.net