The Financial Times Updates MBA Ranking for 2015

Harvard, LBS, and Wharton lead this year's ranking

The Financial Times has updated its Global MBA Ranking for 2015.

This year, Harvard Business School holds onto the top spot, which the school has held since 2013. "Harvard," according to the FT, "is among the top schools for career progression and its MBA was the most highly recommended by graduates of other schools."

London Business School has risen one spot from last year to claim the second position, while the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business takes the third spot.

Stanford Graduate School of Business and INSEAD are tied for the fourth position. Number six belongs to Columbia Business School, and number seven is taken by Spain's IESE Business School.

MIT Sloan, Chicago - Booth, and Berkeley - Haas round out the top ten, in that order.

Big movers

Although the top ten was mostly dominated by schools that only moved a spot or two, there was some larger movement in the rest of the ranking. China's CEIBS, for instance, jumped six positions to take spot number 11, making it the highest-ranked Asian business school in the ranking. HEC Paris moved up five spots to claim position number 16. And Switzerland's IMD Business School lost eight positions, to barely squeak into the top 20.

Other big movers include Lancaster University Management School, which rose 27 spots to land at position number 50, and China's Shanghai Jiao Tong - Antai, which rose 22 spots to take position number 55.

Debuting at position number 66 is the University of San Diego School of Business Administration, which makes it the highest-ranked new entrant.

This year marks the return of several business schools which had previously dropped off the ranking. Hong Kong's CUHK Business School, for instance, which dropped off the ranking in 2013, re-appeared strongly this year at position number 30. Likewise, Notre Dame - Mendoza, which also dropped out of the ranking in 2013, re-appeared this year at position number 89.

Canada's Alberta School of Business left the ranking in 2011, but came back this year at number 86. Another Canadian business school, Queen's School of Business, left the ranking in 2007 but has re-appeared this year at position number 86.

For more about the Financial Times' Global MBA Ranking and other ranking information, please see FIND MBA's MBA Rankings page.

Comments

ralph | Jan 27, 2015 08:14

Notable schools that dropped off the ranking between 2014 and 2015 -- many lower-tier US schools here:

Tulane - Freeman: ranked 92 in 2014
UC Davis: ranked 98 in 2014
BYU: ranked 93 in 2014
Texas A&M - Mays: ranked 75 in 2014
Wake Forest: ranked 94 in 2014
Hult: ranked 61 in 2014

Also, absent were these schools:
Brazil's Coppead
France's EMlyon
Peking - Guanghua (ranked 57 in 2014, and conspicuous because most other Chinese business schools improved or held steady...)

And finally, Canada's York - Schulich, which has been a relatively consistent fixture in the middle of the rankings, is absent for the first time since 2000. Not sure what happened here.

Duncan | Jan 27, 2015 14:29

With both of these, it's either the volume of data (for the smaller programmes) or the salaries (for the larger ones). BYU and EMLyon were both overdue for an audit (not sure why they missed the audit in the last few years; Hult was also due for an audit this year).

ralph | Jan 27, 2015 17:40

Do you suppose that Schulich was also due for an audit? The school's salaries have been only a bit lower than Rotman, and higher than McGill, which are both still ranked. I wouldn't think that data volume would be an issue.

Duncan | Jan 28, 2015 02:41

No, Schulich and McGill were both audited in 2014 (you can add in the audit dates on the 2014 ranking). It certainly had a big fall in salary last year: http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/york-university-schulich/global-mba-ranking-2014#global-mba-ranking-2014 I guesss it just continued. Five of the ten schools with the lowest salaries in the 2015 ranking are Canadian; My guess is that Schulich continues to under-perform against McGill (which actually did better on salary last year) because of its more junior intake.

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