Forbes published its 11th biennial rankings of the best American business schools, and ranked Chicago Booth at #1, Stanford at #2 and Kellogg at #3. Comparing to the 2017 rankings, Wharton declined from #1 to #5, Stanford remained 2nd, Harvard and Kellogg switced places, While Booth rose from #7 to 1st place.

The Forbes‘ ranking is entirely based on the five-year gain in compensation reported by MBA graduates after accounting for their opportunity costs (two years of forgone compensation) tuition and required fees minus scholarship help. Forbes examined more than 100 schools and reached out to 17,500 alumni around the globe for 2019 ranking of full-time M.B.A. programs, comparing graduates’ earnings in their first five years after getting their M.B.A. to their opportunity cost (two years of forgone compensation, tuition and required fees) to arrive at a five-year M.B.A. gain, which is the basis for the final rank. For example, Booth grads from the Class of 2014 entered school with a median compensation of $83,000 and banked $245,000 last year for a “five-year M.B.A. gain” of $94,400 after tuition and fees. Forbes‘ survey of alumni indicates that a degree at a leading business school is still incredibly valuable and pays for itself in roughly four years. Students at the top 25 programs increased their earnings from $73,000 on average before school to $193,000, compared with $70,000 and $179,000 for grads at top schools two years ago. Earnings have increased 10% annually since graduation.

Here are the top 30 MBA programs in the US according to Forbes:

  1. Chicago (Booth)
  2. Stanford
  3. Northwestern (Kellogg)
  4. Harvard
  5. Pennsylvania (Wharton)
  6. Dartmouth (Tuck)
  7. Columbia
  8. MIT (Sloan)
  9. Cornell (Johnson)
  10. Michigan (Ross)
  11. UC Berkeley (Haas)
  12. Yale
  13. Virginia (Darden)
  14. Duke (Fuqua)
  15. UNC (Kenan-Flagler)
  16. UCLA (Anderson)
  17. Carnegie Mellon (Tepper)
  18. Texas-Austin (McCombs)
  19. Indiana (Kelley)
  20. NYU (Stern)
  21. USC (Marshall)
  22. Emory (Goizueta)
  23. Washington (Foster)
  24. Brigham Young (Marriott)
  25. Notre Dame (Mendoza)
  26. Rice (Jones)
  27. Michigan State (Broad)
  28. Georgia Tech (Scheller)
  29. Washington U-St. Louis (Olin)
  30. Vanderbilt (Owen)

In addition to the US rankings, Forbes also published rankings of International MBA programs:

The best 1-year International MBA programs: 

  1. IMD
  2. Insead
  3. Cambridge (Judge)
  4. SDA Bocconi
  5. Oxford (Said)
  6. IE Business School
  7. Indian School of Business
  8. Warwick
  9. Mannheim
  10. ESMT Berlin
  11. Imperial
  12. S P Jain
  13. Hong Kong
  14. Erasmus (Rotterdam)
  15. City U (Cass)
  16. HEC Montreal
  17. Hult

The best 2-year International MBA programs: 

  1. London
  2. HEC Paris
  3. IESE
  4. Ceibs
  5. Esade
  6. Singapore
  7. Manchester (Alliance)
  8. AGSM (Australia)
  9. York (Schulich)
  10. Ipade