The FT MBA 2023 ranking has many surprises. For the first time, Columbia Business School has secured the top position. And what do you think about The Wharton MBA program which was ranked first in the world in the 2022 rankings and has disappeared from the 2023 rankings list? The reason behind the disappearance of Wharton is speculated due to not reaching the threshold for alumni survey respondents for inclusion. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is the most volatile list ever. Some 17 MBA programs ranked this year were not on last year’s list.

Getting back to the ranking, the second spot is taken by INSEAD followed by IESE Business School. This is a huge surprise for the Spanish school from Barcelona which was ranked 10th last year. The fourth spot is shared by Harvard Business School and Stanford Graduate School of Business. SDA Bocconi has taken a huge leap from 13th place last year to 5th place this year. University of California at Berkeley Haas, Cornell University Johnson, and Kellogg School of Management are in 7th, 8th, and 9th position respectively. Though Yale School of Management slipped one position down, still it managed to be in the top 10 schools. As you can see 7 out of 10 top schools in the FT News ranking are based in the US and only four M7 schools made it to the top 10.

Among the top 10 European programs, it is surprising to see that London Business School (with an overall rank of 16) is placed below IESE and SDA Bocconi. Also, ESCP has surpassed the University of Oxford Said. HEC Paris is in the 5th position, followed by IE Business School, and the University of Cambridge Judge.

The top 5 Asian schools are pretty much in the same positions. CEIBS tops the list, followed by the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Business School, and the Indian School of Business.

Some 20 MBA programs posted double-digit gains this year. The University of Maryland Smith and Queen’s University (Smith) both jumped 28 places from last year’s rankings. Many European schools like – EDHEC Business School, ESCP Business School, Rotterdam School of Management, IE Business School, etc. have climbed up the ladder.

However, the ten MBA programs had a double-digit downfall too but still managed to be in the top 100. The biggest setbacks amongst them are Babson College and Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. Babson went down from 65th position to 95th position, and Tepper has been placed at 49th position (was 23rd in 2022). Babson’s decline can be attributed to weaker performance in two heavily weighted categories: average alumni salaries fell to $142,871 from $147,594 a year earlier, at a time when pay went higher at many other schools. Also, Carnegie Mellon, where alumni salaries fell slightly to $176,091 from $178,194. The percentage increase in alumni pay from pre-MBA levels also declined to 127% from 136% last year.

Some of this year-over-year movement may have been caused by significant changes in the Financial Times‘ methodology, the most dramatic in recent memory. It has lessened the weight it gives to salaries and added a new metric that to measure the carbon footprint of a business school. What a school’s carbon footprint has to do with a quality MBA experience is anyone’s guess, but the FT deems it more important than 12 of the 21 metrics counted in this ranking. The 4% weight given to carbon is now greater than the importance given to gender parity, diversity, female faculty, and even international course experience. No less crucial, the FT either altered the weights or subtracted or added new metrics in more than two-thirds of the 21 measurements that go into the ranking.

Here are the top 20 schools:

Rank School Name Country 2022 Rank
1 Columbia Business School US 2
2 Insead France/Singapore 3
3 Iese Business School Spain 10
4 Harvard Business School US 3
4 Stanford Graduate School of Business US 6
6 SDA Bocconi School of Management Italy 13
7 University of California at Berkeley: Haas US 14
8 Cornell University: Johnson US 17
9 Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management US 5
10 Yale School of Management US 9
11 Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business US 7
11 MIT: Sloan US 19
11 University of Chicago: Booth US 13
14 UCLA Anderson School of Management US 26
15 Dartmouth College: Tuck US 18
16 London Business School UK 8
17 HEC Paris France 11
17 University of Virginia: Darden US 20
19 New York University: Stern US 14
20 Ceibs China 16

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