Harvard University tops the list in U.S. News Best Business School rankings 2017 overall rankings for securing highest starting salary and bonus for its class of 2015. Graduates of Coastal Carolina University, along with the University of South Florida stand first in the highest employment three months after graduation. In a separate shortlist, Stanford University had the highest average GMAT score of 733.
Harvard University tops the list in U.S. News Best Business Schools rankings 2017, with Stanford and Boothtied in the second place followed by Wharton in the fourth spot.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan) gets tied for the fifth place with Northwestern University (Kellogg). Stern School of Business found its ranking plunge from 11 in the previous year’s list to 20 in the full-time rankings and 10 in part-time rankings, on account of an omission while submitting the data.
The New York-based School had not submitted the number of new entrants for the fall 2015 class for both its full-time and part-time MBA programs. In the 2016 rankings, the school had tied at No. 11 among full-time programs and was fourth in part-time programs.
U.S. News had conducted a survey of all 470 MBA programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International in fall 2015 and early 2016. A total of 379 B-Schools had responded. Of these, 129 provided enough of the data needed to calculate the full-time MBA rankings, based on a weighted average of the indicators, it said.
The list also gives information on class sizes, tuition and fees, employment prospects, salary and bonus and other details.
The entire batch of 2015 graduates of Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina as well as the University of South Florida managed to find employment three months after graduation. The average was 84% among all ranked MBA programs.
Seventeen schools were in the 95-99% employment range. Those at the top were Rutgers, The State university of New Jersey-Newark and New Brusnswick; University of Iowa (Tippie); Louisiana State University-Baton Rouge (Ourso); Temple University (FOX), Philadelphia; Washington University in St. Louis (Olin) and Georgia Institute of Technology (Saunders), New York; Baylor University (Hankamer), Texas.
As far as salaries and bonuses are concerned, Harvard tops the list with the School’s 2015 graduates drawing the highest average starting salary and bonus at $149,784. Alumni from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College were close behind at $148,025.
On the third spot was University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) with $146,761, Columbia University in fourth place with $146,436 and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan) in the fifth with $106,201.
Almost half of the 128 schools that submitted salary data to U.S. News had an average starting salary and bonus of more than $90,000 for their 2015 graduates. The average for all schools was $91,940.
The U.S. News shortlist for GMAT showed Stanford University on top with students having the highest average GMAT score of 733 among the 129 business schools that submitted the data. University of Pennsylvania was on the second spot with a score of 732 followed by University of Chicago (Booth) with 726. Harvard was on the fourth spot with a score of 725.
While the average GMAT score at Stanford had risen by one point from its 2014 class, the school dropped a spot in the overall rankings tying for No. 2 spot with University of Chicago (Booth).
Harvard University, which took over the No. 1 spot in the rankings this year, had an average GMAT score of 725 – one point lower than its fall 2014 average.
Among all the MBA programs that provided data on GMAT scores, the average was 630, much lower than the 722 average among the top 11.
Explaining the methodology for the survey, U.S. News said Business school deans and directors of accredited MBA programs were asked to rate programs on a scale of 1 (marginal) to 5 (outstanding). Those who did not know enough about a school to evaluate it fairly were asked to mark “don’t know.” Responses came from 41% percent 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.
The Top 50 Business Schools as per the US News 2016 Business School Ranking
