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? the London Business School continues to dominate, with INSEAD close behind for the third year in a row. In addition to the gains made by IE, HEC Paris, Cambridge Judge and ESMT, the UK’s Warwick Business School has surged into the top 10, though the school does not take part in the BusinessWeek ranking. Imperial College London is included for the first year now that they participate in at least two of the major rankings.
| 2014 Rank | 2013 Rank | 2012 Rank | Institution | Country | Financial Times 2014* | BusinessWeek 2014* | Economist 2014* | Forbes 2013* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 1 | London Business School | UK | 1 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
| 2 | 2 | 2 | Insead | France / S'pore | 2 | 4 | 4 | 2 |
| 3 | 3 | 4 | IMD | Switzerland | 4 | 8 | 5 | 1 |
| 4 | 5 | 5 | IE Business School | Spain | 5 | 1 | 9 | 5 |
| 5 | 4 | 3 | Iese Business School | Spain | 3 | 7 | 2 | 12 |
| 6 | 8 | 6 | HEC Paris | France | 7 | 9 | 1 | 15 |
| 7 | 6 | 10 | Univ of Cambridge - Judge | UK | 6 | 5 | 16 | 8 |
| 8 | 12 | 14 | Warwick Business School | UK | 10 | 10 | 7 | |
| 9 | 10 | 15 | SDA Bocconi | Italy | 11 | 11 | 12 | 3 |
| 10 | 7 | 7 | Esade Bus Sch | Spain | 8 | 13 | 6 | 14 |
| 11 | 9 | 8 | Univ of Oxford - Saïd | UK | 9 | 6 | 22 | 6 |
| 12 | 12 | 13 | Cranfield Sch of Mgmt | UK | 15 | 10 | 17 | 9 |
| 13 | - | - | ESMT | 24 | 2 | |||
| 14 | 11 | 9 | Manchester Business School | UK | 14 | 16 | - | 11 |
| 14 | 14 | 11 | Mannheim Bus Sch | Germany | 18 | 12 | 11 | - |
| 16 | 15 | 12 | City University - Cass | UK | 13 | 18 | 13 | |
| 17 | - | - | Imperial | 16 | 14 | |||
| 18 | 16 | 16 | Rotterdam Sch of Mgmt, Erasmus | Netherlands | 12 | 15 | 20 | - |
| 19 | 18 | 29 | Univ of Strathclyde | UK | 19 | 15 | - | |
| 20 | 16 | - | Univ of Bath | UK | 22 | 13 | - | |
| 21 | 21 | 18 | Lancaster University Mgmt Sch | UK | 21 | 27 | 10 | |
| 22 | 19 | 24 | University of St Gallen | Switzerland | 23 | 19 | - | |
| 23 | 19 | 20 | Univ College Dublin - Smurfit | Ireland | 25 | 21 | - | |
| 24 | 22 | 17 | EM Lyon | France | 26 | 24 | - | |
| 25 | - | - | Durham | 27 | 26 | |||
| *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 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.
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