For the second year in a row, Stanford GSB ranked by the Financial Times as the best business school in the world, in its 2019 global MBA rankings. Harvard business school ranked 2nd (up from 5th last year), followed by INSEAD, Wharton and CEIBS (highest rank ever for an Asian school in the FT rankings).

The same schools make up the top-10 positions in the ranking as last year, but there were swings at the top of the table. The top 100 of this year’s rankings includes 51 US schools, 11 UK schools, 6 Chinese schools, 5 French schools and 4 Indian schools.

For the second year in a row Stanford Graduate School of Business tops the ranking. This is also the second successive year that its alumni have had the highest weighted average salary, $228,074, up from $214,742. Stanford also ranked top for career progress. Class of 2015 alumni from schools surveyed for this ranking judged HBS top among institutions from which they would recruit graduates. HBS alumni had the second highest average weighted salary at $205,486. Insead drops one place to number three, but it is the highest-ranked MBA provider in Europe. It was top in 2016 and 2017 — only the second European school to reach number one in this ranking. Insead’s position is helped by its class of 2015 alumni, whose average weighted salary was $179,661 — the top among European schools and above the average in the table at about $137,900.

As is often the case with all rankings, there were plenty of surprises on the new FT list. Oxford University’s Saïd Business School jumped 14 spots, more than any other Top 25 school, to gain its highest FT ranking ever in 13th place. Another notable gainer this year is the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. With a year-over-year rankings gain of nine places, Darden moved into the Top 25, ranking 23rd from 32nd only a year ago. This year also marked the return of IE Business School on the FT ranking, after the school was tossed off last year’s list after FT editors said they had discovered “irregularities” in returned alumni surveys from IE.

The FT rankings is based on alumni survey conducted among 150 schools. The FT surveys alumni three years after completing their MBA. The ranking has 20 different criteria. Alumni responses inform eight criteria that together contribute 61 per cent of its weight. Eleven criteria are calculated from school data, accounting for 29 per cent of the ranking. The first two alumni criteria are average income three years after graduation and salary increase compared with pre-MBA salary, both weighted at 20 per cent.

Here are the top 25 MBA programs according to the Financial Times:

1. Stanford GSB
2. Harvard
3. INSEAD
4. UPenn (Wharton)
5. CEIBS
6. London
7. Chicago (Booth)
8. MIT (Sloan)
9. Columbia
10. Berkeley (Haas)
11. Yale SOM
12. IESE
13. Oxford (Said)
14. Northwestern (Kellogg)
15. Dartmouth (Tuck)
16. Cambridge (Judge)
17. Singapore
18. Hong Kong UST
19. HEC Paris
19. Duke (Fuqua)
21. ESADE
22. IMD
23. Virginia (Darden)
24. Indian School of Business
25. NYU (Stern)