Hanna Renaldi's Blog: U.S. News Ranks Best Business Schools in 2016

How did your target MBA programs fare this year? Let’s take a look:

Here are some observations and highlights (some from Poets & Quants):

• This is the first year in seven years that Stanford hasn’t been in the top spot. The school is now tied for second place with Chicago Booth – and this is the highest position Booth has ever held in the U.S. News rankings. (According to P&Q, this puts Stanford in an “awkward” position.)

• Slots 5, 6, and 7 have remained the same now for three years straight, with MIT Sloan, Northewestern Kellogg, and UC Berekeley Haas standing strong.

• Yale SOM jumped five places this year, from 13th place to 8th, beating out Columbia, NYU Stern, UVA Darden, Michigan Ross, and Duke Fuqua. This is Yale’s highest rank ever.

• Stern dropped from 11th place to 20th place this year. (The P&Q article explains that this is due to a delay in Stern sending information used to calculate the schools average GMAT/GRE scores.)

• Biggest winner: University of Missouri’s Trulaske College of Business jumped 20 spots from 79th to 59th this year. (Last year this school had dropped 21 spots!)

• Biggest loser: University of Connecticut’s business school at Storrs, plummeted 20 spots from 48th to 68th place.

Notes on Methodology:

• 379 of the 470 MBA programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International responded to the U.S. News survey in fall 2015, of which 129 provided enough information to be calculated in these rankings.

• Indicators include: quality assessment (weighted by 0.40 – 0.25 for the peer assessment and 0.15 for the recruiter assessment); placement success (weighted by 0.35 – 0.14 for mean starting salary and bonus, 0.07 for employment rates at graduation, and 0.14 for employment rates three months post-graduation; student selectivity (weighted by 0.25 – 0.1625 for mean GMAT and GRE scores, 0.075 for mean undergraduate GPA, and 0.0125 for acceptance rate.