Top 10 Business Schools in the US 2014/15

The change from a one-two-three to a three way tie doesn’t affect Chicago Booth, which stays put in fourth place this year.

The second oldest business school in the US came out as a clear winner among its peers for the level of influence held by its faculty in a 2014 Thomson Reuters report, and recently announced the launch of a new innovation hub. Chicago Booth is also home of the world’s first executive MBA program, and in 2014 shifted its Asian base of operations for the school’s present-day 21-month EMBA from Singapore to Hong Kong – a program also offered from its European headquarters in London. Seven Nobel Prize winners have served on its faculty.

Trading places with the Kellogg School, Columbia Business School now stands fifth in this year’s list of the top US business schools. Situated in New York City, the school enjoys strong links with MBA employers based in the locale, not least those on Wall Street (value investing is a particular strongpoint at the school). To give back to the city it loves, Columbia Business School held a student-led community project earlier this year.    

Although the Kellogg School is down a place in this year’s MBA rankings, it received a maximum score from international recruiters – the segment on which 85% of the final standings are based.

The school is held in particularly high esteem by employers in the world of marketing and conducts an annual review of the advertising that intersperses national coverage of the US Super Bowl. Based in Evanston, Illinois, the Kellogg School has additional campuses in downtown Chicago, and Miami, Florida.

MIT retained its place at the top of this year’s QS World University Rankings® 2014/15 and in the world of business education the MIT Sloan School of Management has gone up two places in our list of the top 10 business schools in the US – undoubtedly aided by the maximum score it received in the new academic portion of QS’s MBA rankings, worth 15% of the final standings this year.

The award of the 2014 Nobel Prize in economics to Jean Tirole ensured that MIT Sloan has been home to another celebrity economist, adding to the likes of Black, Scholes and Merton – creators of everyone’s favorite business theorem (is it really that special? Apparently so).

In a year in which development plans at the Ross School have compelled the University of Michigan to relocate a tree dating back two centuries, the school also becomes the first of this year’s two new entries to the top 10 business schools in the US, moving up three places from 11th this time last year. 

The Ross School offers weekend, evening and global MBA program formats and is based at the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus, which recently topped a list of the US’s most educated cities.

Los Angeles is home to the next of our top US business schools, but in ninth place, UCLA Anderson has dropped two places this time round.

Its south Californian location makes it a good place to explore the emerging possibilities presented by markets in Latin America and, alongside its traditional full-time offering, UCLA Anderson now offers an executive MBA in conjunction with Chile’s Universidad Adolfo Ibàñez (UAI) – a new entry in this year’s MBA rankings for Latin America.

Rounding off our list of the top 10 business schools in the US is NYU Stern – the second new addition to this year’s top 10 and the year’s biggest climber after rising from 14th position in last year’s rankings. 

NYU Stern, known for its excellence in finance, has a strong tilt towards research – the school boasts three Nobel Prize winners among their active faculty ranks and launched a new globalization research center earlier this year.

For a breakdown of the demographics, including GMAT averages and proportions of international students, on every MBA program featured here as well outside of the top 10 business schools in the US, download the report in full for free.