Out Now: QS EMBA Rankings 2018

The QS EMBA Rankings 2018 have been released today, ranking the best executive MBA programs around the world. Leading the way globally is the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by MIT Sloan School of Management and London Business School.

As well as a global table, there is also a breakdown of this year’s rankings by region, with separate tables for Europe, Latin America, North America and the Asia-Pacific region.

Joint EMBA programs are ranked separately and the EMBA program offered by Columbia Business School, the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and London Business School (LBS) is ranked top of the 24 joint EMBAs included this year.

Arnie Longboy, Executive Director of Leadership Programmes at LBS, highlights the importance of rankings like the QS EMBA Rankings 2018 to potential candidates:

“Given it’s a serious decision to make, especially in terms of time and money, a prospective student should try to use as many evaluative tools as possible.  Rankings like this are really useful, not least as a means to create a shortlist of schools to explore further.”

More than 100 EMBA programs worldwide participated in the rankings, which assess schools based on the following ranking indicators:

• Employer reputation (30 percent)
• Thought leadership (25 percent)
• Career outcomes (20 percent)
• Executive profile (15 percent)
• Diversity (10 percent)

Find out more about the methodology used in the rankings here.

Alex Chisholm, head of business school analytics at QS, said: "More than 100 executive MBA programs from around the world participated in the 2018 QS EMBA Rankings. These globally recognized business schools have together produced more than 100,000 EMBA graduates over the years.

"Many EMBA candidates evaluate local options or identify flexible programs to fit within their existing commitments to work and family. These rankings, and the targeted regional tables QS has constructed, can hopefully help them as they navigate this process. 

"Flexibility is increasingly a theme. Around 40 percent of the EMBA programs we collaborated with offer EMBA candidates varying lengths of time requirements to complete the program on their own terms. With regard to content, two out of three programs (66 percent) give students choices in what classes or specializations they can focus on during the program.

"Although global demand for EMBA programs has been mixed in recent years, we found that more than 50 percent of programs reported receiving more applications in the most recent application cycle than they did the year prior."

North American schools have long been thought of as the home of the MBA, and they continue their dominance in the EMBA rankings, with a first-place finish for Wharton in both the North American rankings and the overall rankings. In addition to this, the global top 10 is made up largely of US schools, with seven programs in the Top 10.

Explore the Global EMBA Rankings 2018 in full here, or click here to view the EMBA Rankings by Region 2018: North America.