MBA50.com has compiled the results of the big five MBA rankings of the last twelve months to produce the MBA50.com Premiership.
How do the top business schools in the U.S. perform when you combine these results?
| 2012 Rank | 2011 Rank | Institution | Country | The FT 2012* | BusWeek 2012 | Economist 2012* | US News 2012 | Forbes 2011 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Harvard Bus Sch | USA | 2 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 2 | Univ of Chicago - Booth | USA | 6 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 3 |
| 3 | 3 | Stanford Univ GSB | USA | 1 | 4 | 8 | 1 | 2 |
| 4 | 4 | Univ of Pennsylvania - Wharton | USA | 3 | 3 | 10 | 3 | 4 |
| 5 | 6 | MIT Sloan Sch of Mgmt | USA | 5 | 9 | 7 | 4 | 10 |
| 6 | 5 | Columbia Bus Sch | USA | 4 | 14 | 5 | 8 | 5 |
| 7 | 8 | Northwestern Univ - Kellogg | USA | 9 | 5 | 13 | 4 | 7 |
| 8 | 7 | Dartmouth College - Tuck | USA | 11 | 12 | 2 | 9 | 6 |
| 9 | 9 | Univ of California at Berkeley - Haas | USA | 7 | 13 | 6 | 7 | 13 |
| 10 | 11 | Univ of Virginia - Darden | USA | 17 | 10 | 3 | 13 | 9 |
| 11 | 13 | Cornell Univ - Johnson | USA | 13 | 7 | 11 | 16 | 8 |
| 12 | 10 | Duke Univ - Fuqua | USA | 8 | 6 | 19 | 12 | 12 |
| 13 | 12 | New York Univ - Stern | USA | 10 | 16 | 9 | 11 | 18 |
| 14 | 15 | Univ of Michigan - Ross | USA | 14 | 8 | 16 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 13 | Yale Sch of Mgmt | USA | 12 | 21 | 17 | 10 | 11 |
| 16 | 17 | Carnegie Mellon - Tepper | USA | 16 | 11 | 12 | 18 | 23 |
| 17 | 16 | UCLA - Anderson | USA | 15 | 18 | 15 | 15 | 20 |
| 18 | 18 | Emory Univ - Goizueta | USA | 18 | 22 | 14 | 19 | 22 |
| 19 | 19 | Univ of Texas at Austin - McCombs | USA | 25 | 19 | 18 | 17 | 17 |
| 20 | 20 | Univ of North Carolina - Kenan-Flagler | USA | 26 | 17 | 26 | 19 | 16 |
| 21 | 21 | Indiana Univ - Kelley | USA | 21 | 15 | 28 | 23 | 27 |
| 22 | 24 | Georgetown Univ - McDonough | USA | 19 | 30 | 24 | 24 | 35 |
| 23 | 25 | Vanderbilt Univ - Owen | USA | 31 | 25 | 21 | 25 | 33 |
| 24 | Ohio State - Fisher | USA | 34 | 27 | 22 | 25 | 34 | |
| 25 | 22 | Univ of Southern California - Marshall | USA | 32 | 28 | 27 | 21 | 39 |
| *Ranking figure above is relative to other U.S. b-schools | ||||||||
Methodology
Only the U.S. business schools are ranked by all five major media rankings. MBA50.com has calculated their overall performance by looking at each ranking position compared to other U.S. schools, and taking an average of those results divided by five.
In the case of the FT and Economist rankings, if a U.S. business school ranked #45 in the overall FT ranking and #40 in the overall Economist ranking, but among U.S. business schools was #23 in the FT and #15 in The Economist, then the relative U.S. regional figure was used for the calculation, and added to those of BusinessWeek, Forbes and US News, before dividing by five to achieve an average score.
The idea of the MBA50.com Premiership is to compare the performance of schools in multiple rankings, and therefore does not include the many good U.S. business schools that appear in fewer than four rankings.
Candidates should remember that this is not scientific approach, and there is no attempt to weight any one ranking greater than the others. As stated before, each ranking uses a different methodology and measures different things with the inherent limitations of each assessment, so doing particularly well in one ranking and less well in another is reflected in the overall average score.
We’ve compiled all the Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, Linkedin groups, MBA blogs, YouTube channels and iTunes podcasts of the top b-schools. Click for our listings of b-schools on social media.
