MBA50.com has compiled the results of the major media MBA rankings of the last twelve months to produce the MBA50.com Premiership.
How do the top business schools in Europe perform when you combine these results?
| 2013 Rank | 2012 Rank | Institution | Country | Financial Times 2013* | BusinessWeek 2012* | Economist 2013* | Forbes 2013* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | London Business School | UK | 1 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| 2 | 2 | Insead | France / S'pore | 2 | 2 | 7 | 2 |
| 3 | 4 | IMD | Switzerland | 6 | 7 | 4 | 1 |
| 4 | 3 | Iese Business School | Spain | 3 | 6 | 1 | 12 |
| 5 | 5 | IE Business School | Spain | 4 | 3 | 15 | 5 |
| 6 | 10 | Univ of Cambridge - Judge | UK | 5 | - | 9 | 8 |
| 7 | 7 | Esade Bus Sch | Spain | 8 | 5 | 5 | 14 |
| 8 | 6 | HEC Paris | France | 7 | 9 | 2 | 15 |
| 9 | 8 | Univ of Oxford - Saïd | UK | 9 | 4 | 17 | 6 |
| 10 | 15 | SDA Bocconi | Italy | 14 | 10 | 14 | 3 |
| 11 | 9 | Manchester Business School | UK | 11 | 12 | - | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | Cranfield Sch of Mgmt | UK | 13 | - | 13 | 9 |
| 12 | 14 | Warwick Business School | UK | 10 | - | 18 | 7 |
| 14 | 11 | Mannheim Bus Sch | Germany | 20 | 8 | 11 | - |
| 15 | 12 | City University - Cass | UK | 15 | - | 12 | 13 |
| 16 | 16 | Rotterdam Sch of Mgmt, Erasmus | Netherlands | 12 | 11 | 19 | - |
| 16 | - | Univ of Bath | UK | 22 | - | 6 | - |
| 18 | 29 | Univ of Strathclyde | UK | 25 | - | 10 | - |
| 19 | 20 | Univ College Dublin - Smurfit | Ireland | 18 | - | 21 | - |
| 19 | 24 | University of St Gallen | Switzerland | 23 | - | 16 | - |
| 21 | 18 | Lancaster University Mgmt Sch | UK | 21 | - | 31 | 10 |
| 22 | 17 | EM Lyon | France | 26 | - | 22 | - |
| 23 | 19 | Vlerick Bus Sch | Belgium | 24 | - | 25 | - |
| *Ranking figure above is relative to other European b-schools | |||||||
Methodology
Very few of the European business schools are ranked by four of the major media rankings. BusinessWeek and Forbes assess only a limited number of non-U.S. business schools, while US News does not consider business schools from Europe at all.
MBA50.com has calculated overall performance by looking at each ranking position compared to other European schools. In the case of the FT and Economist rankings, if a European business school ranked #41 in the overall FT ranking and #33 in the overall Economist ranking, but among European business schools was #14 in the FT and #10 in The Economist, then the relative European regional figure was used for the calculation, and added where appropriate to those of BusinessWeek and Forbes, before dividing the results by the number of rankings in which they appear 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 European business schools such as Imperial College in London, ESMT in Berlin and that appear in fewer than two 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.
