100 Best Business Schools in the World (2023) – Business School Rankings

Every single business school in the world, that is on the top schools’ list, has a section on their website solely dedicated to the various ranks they have been given by publications every year. Every single MBA student has, at least once during their MBA journey, checked a leading publication for business school rankings.

That’s the kind of power a simple list of business schools yields in the world of MBA.

A great man once said, “With great power comes great responsibility”. Not every list for MBA colleges
ranking that is put out on the internet has credibility. When selecting a business school, you simply cannot risk going through MBA rankings that might contain a sponsored school or a school the list makers collaborated with.

To avoid this problem, use sources that are transparent about their MBA colleges’s ranking methodologies and have detailed facts and figures present to support the placement of each school. The most reliable sources for business school rankings currently are:

1. Financial Times
2. US News
3. The Economist
4. Bloomberg Businessweek
5. Forbes

But MBA rankings are much more complicated than they seem. Simply running after the dream of getting into the business school ranked #1 in either of these publications would also be idiotic. Nevertheless, these B-school rankings do provide a good base to help one search for their perfect fit with a business school.

Before addressing that head-on, there are some basics that one needs to know about business school rankings.

100 Best Business Schools in
the world

What Makes the 10 Best
Business Schools Different

Business schools across the board have faced a “slowdown” in the past couple of years. As tier 3 or 4 business schools face challenges due to the slowdown, the top 10 Business Schools stay unfazed.

Why?

Have you ever stopped to think why a business school in the top 10 business school list is different from the ones in the top 20 or the top 30? How is it that a “slowdown” affects the tier 3 or 4 schools and hardly makes a dent in the acceptance rates at top tier schools?

The answer is more than just the brand that the top 10 business schools have created for themselves.

Recruitments

Yes, the top 10 business schools receive a better recruiter group than the remaining business schools. Just like top recruiters get to choose the cream of the class at a top school, a top school also gets to choose the cream of all recruiting organizations. But that isn’t the only way that recruitments make the top 10 business schools special.

Career Impact staff at top US business schools have been noted to maintain close relations with top recruiters. The activeness of the CI staff doesn’t end here. They are known to pay close attention to each student by prepping them for recruitment and helping them network with the alumni since the very first day of school.

Firms like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley are some of the top MBA recruiters with the highest paying jobs. These firms, tend to teeter between the top 10 schools every year, leaving only a few slots for the top 20 or top 30 business schools.

Recruitments are also easier for international students at a top business school. Finding organizations that sponsor a work vise like the H1B Visa for the United States, becomes much easier due to the volume of recruiters and the active Career Impact cells.

Resources

I feel just reading the list of things that set a top 10 school apart from the rest of the business schools would make one guess what the explanation could be.

Without a doubt, the top 10 business schools enjoy the best faculty for business education. The faculty at such schools is generally a mix of academics and top-level executives from various fields who either take guest lectures or hold seminars.

These are schools that pioneer teaching methodologies, and projects such as MIT Sloan’s Action Learning Labs. These methods then trickle down to other business schools.

Other than the faculty, the diversity of the MBA class is also an additional resource. Since the top schools enjoy their pick of the applicants, creating a diverse (culture, race, religion, lifestyles, social experiences, etc.). Dealing with a diverse set of individuals in their MBA education stimulates students to be innovative in their solutions while keeping “diversity in ideologies” as a factor.

Another resource whose quality declines as business school ranks get higher is networking. Since top schools ensure the maintenance of a strong alumni network and have alumni placed in high-level jobs at corporate giants, the quality of networks that students get to make is much higher than a tier 3 school.

Scholarships and fundraising

Since the Top 10 business schools have created a brand for themselves, fundraising for scholarships is much easier. Most top schools, though do not provide full-ride scholarships, provides scholarships to about 50% of their students.

At schools like Harvard, about 90% of the students get some form of scholarship. With tuitions for top business schools going over $200,000, these schools do not rely on the applicant to pay, in full, for their education.

The sense of community and school spirit these schools instill in their students, many alumni also donate to the schools often. Just a few years ago, Ratan Tata donated $50 million to his alma mater Harvard, a top 10 US Business School.

10 Best Business Schools Vs
20 Best Business Schools Vs 30 Best Business
Schools

To make the comparison of the Top 10 Business Schools Vs Top 20 Business Schools Vs Top 30 Business Schools easier, we have selected one middle-ranked school from each section.

From the Top 10 Business Schools, we have MIT Sloan. For the Top 20 Business Schools, Dartmouth’s Tuck is the middle school. And UCLA’s Anderson will be used as the comparison school for the Top 30 Business Schools.

Here are the main differences between the top 10, top 20, and the top 30, business schools.

Criteria Top 10 Business Schools (MIT Sloan) Top 20 Business Schools (Tuck) Top 30 Business Schools (UCLA Anderson)
Rank #6 #16 #25
Acceptance Rate 11.6% 20% 12.7%
Tuition $85,807 $75,108 $65,114
Average GMAT score 727 723 719
Average GPA 3.6 3.5 3.5
Median Compensation $170,000 $170,000 $150,000
International students 42% 38% 33%
Job offers 3 months post-graduation 95.7% 90% 90%

10 Best European Business
Schools

Rank Business School Average Salary Average GMAT Score
1. INSEAD $179,661 711
2. London Business School $169,675 701
3. Cambridge $163,508 691
4. HEC Paris $142,622 690
5. IESE Business School $148,480 681
6. Saïd $151,944 690
7. IMD $161,443 680
8. IE Business School $153,547 670
9. Mannheim $96,000 675
10. SDA Bocconi $130,628 665

10 Best Business Schools in
Asia Pacific

Rank Business School Average Salary Average GMAT Score
1. INSEAD (Singapore) $179,661 709
2. CEIBS $174,115 682
3. National University of Singapore Business School Singapore $153,216 Couldn’t find
4. HKUST Business School $156,202 (median) 660
5. Indian Institute of Management: Bangalore $31,910 699
6. Indian School of Business $35,051 709
7. Fudan University School of management $110,062 650
8. University of Hong Kong $131,386 650
9. Renmin University of China Business School $100,003 (range) 400-700
10. Indian Institute of Management: Calcutta $27,339 706

10 Best Business Schools in
the USA

Rank Business School Average Salary
1. Stanford University $168,226
1. University of Pennsylvania, Wharton $172,016
3. Northwestern University, Kellogg $163,752
3. University of Chicago, Booth $164,607
5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan $160,291
6. Harvard University $164,872
7. University of California Berkeley, Haas $159,972
8. Columbia University $164,945
9. Yale University $152,860
10. New York University (Stern) $168,291

10 Best Business Schools in
Canada

Rank Business School Average Salary (CAD)
1. University of Toronto – Rotman School of Business $92,133
2. McGill University – Desautels Faculty of Management $87661
3. York University – Schulich School of Business (2017) $91,500
4. Western University – Ivey Business School $92,000
5. HEC Montréal (2017) $96,444
6. Queen’s Smith School of Business $128,681
7. Alberta School of Business $88,881
8. UBC Sauder School of Business $83,633
9. Concordia University – John Molson School of Business $85,259
10. Sobey School of Business NA

10 Best Business Schools in
Australia

Rank Business School Average Salary
1. Melbourne Business School $115,679
2. UNSW (AGSM) $106,393
3. Monash Business School N/A
4. UQ Business School $170,000
5. MGSM Macquarie $95,741
6. University of Western Australia Business School 136,520
7. Australian National University 61,229
8. Deakin Business School N/A
9. Sydney Business School (Wollongong) N/A
10. University of Otago Business School N/A

10 Best Business Schools in
India

Rank Business School Average Salary
1. IIM Ahmedabad INR 25,83,126
2. IIM Bangalore INR 24,54,000
3. IIM Calcutta INR 27,90,000
4. XLRI Xavier School of Management INR 24,30,000
5. Indian School of Business (ISB) INR 24,35,915
6. SPJIMR Mumbai INR 22,00,000
7. IIM Indore INR 20,79,000
8. IIM Lucknow INR 24,25,000
9. FMS Delhi INR 23,20,000
10. IIFT Delhi INR 18,00,000

Optimizing MBA College
Rankings

Start by knowing that a rank 11 college is as good as a rank 10 college even though it’s not in the Top 10 business schools. In simple terms don’t look at individual numbers. I prefer looking at the ranks in clusters of 5. If you wished to know what group of schools share similar compensation, and faculty to your target business school select two schools before it and two schools after it. For example, if your target school is ranked 16, schools from the rank 14-18 will have similar attributes to your target school.

What works for me might not work for you. Thus, having a more detailed way to optimize a business school ranking is necessary.

1. Limitations of MBA College
Rankings

One very important thing to keep in mind while using a ranking is the limitation it poses. Forbes’ list only takes compensation into account while awarding ranks to business schools. If your inclination is towards a non-profit organization or entrepreneurship, the Forbes’ ranking would be of no value to you.

2. Research a cluster of schools

The cluster of 5 schools that I detailed above can be a great help during school selection. Since rankings generally rely on quantifiable data, things like school value, student culture, school location need to be researched separately. These are leading factors in a student’s success or failure at business school.

If you aren’t a good fit with the student culture or the school values, the chances of the admissions committee rejecting your application would be much higher. Researching the cluster of five will help you find a school that provides the statistical benefits that you were looking for along with the aforementioned unquantifiable factors.

3. Choose a reliable source

The variety of business school rankings available only make the applicants’ work harder. Do not rely on any ranking available to you. Choose some reliable sources as mentioned at the beginning of this blog.

Going to publications like US News, Bloomberg, Forbes, etc. is smarter as their rankings are much more transparent than most others.

MBA Programs to look out for
in 2022

Since there’s already a plethora of MBA rankings of top business schools available, listing them all in this blog seemed fruitless. Instead, it seems like a better idea to list a few business schools that are getting the press for all the good reasons. These are schools that are adding great value to the MBA community.

London Business School

In 2018 London Business School’s student body organized its first mental health week. The week-long sessions of Yoga and Meditation have now become a tradition with the school moving into the third year of promoting mental health amongst MBA students.

CEIBS

The China Europe International Business School isn’t just rising fast in the business school rankings. Graduate compensation at CEIBS also saw a whopping 147% increase between the years 2015-2019.

Indian School of Business

Founded in 2001, ISB has quickly secured its spot amongst the top 30 business school in the world in Financial Times’ MBA rankings. For a school hardly two decades old, ISB boasts of a pleasantly surprising 98% employment rate for MBA graduates.

Nanyang Business School

Talking of young schools, Nanyang Business School Singapore is also fast becoming an MBA program to reckon with. Founded merely three decades ago, the school has quickly placed itself on the #35 spot on Financial Times’ business school rankings.

Saïd (Oxford University)

Another young school that has managed to mark a permanent spot in the top 25 business schools in the world for three years now is Oxford University’s Saïd. The school has jumped back and forth between the top 15 and the top 25 schools in the past three years and has become a bit of a wild card in the ranking lists.

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