2024 US News Rankings Winners & Losers: Stanford is #1, HBS is #6

Question

The rankings have been published:  https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools/mba-rankings

https://gmatclub.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/us-news-2024.png

Winners:  
 
 Stanford GSB + 5 
 Haas +4 
 Darden +4 
 McCombs +4

Losers:  
 
 Tuck -4 (they shot up last year, so this is a correction back to historic #10) 
 Ross - 4 (down to 12) 
 Marshall - 3 (they went from 26 to 15 in the last few years, a correction)

Other notable changes: 
 
 Katz + 39 (insane adjustment) 
 Fisher +14 
 Olin +11

Kimchi-77 · Answer

Why has Stanford and HaaS shot up is there any obvious factor?

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bb · Answer

Looking at the data, it looks like it’s all about salary and graduation. Stanford has the highest of anyone at almost 210,000, which is barely enough to rent a studio in San Francisco 😂

Haas has an average gmat of 740, higher than Pierre schools but surprisingly a lower salary at 188… much lower than any other top 15 program. That is super surprising

bb · Answer

Here are the trends over the last 2 years:

https://gmatclub.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ranking-2022-2024-1.png

Businessconquerer · Answer

4 universities tied at 20.
Basically after 20 there's just 24

PyjamaScientist · Answer

Per my analysis of the last two decades of this ranking s***show, there hasn't been much considerable change for any school except for Yale. US News does a great job of tinkering with a few things here and there and moving schools up and down a bit whilst keeping them in their "assigned" band - all to keep these schools happy with a simmer of hope.

Businessconquerer · Answer

That is a credible perspective fr
I think many people forget that the rankings are to be looked at in Bands

Except for the following three schools- USC Marshall, Katz, UF Warrington; these jump bands like anything. WashU fluctuates way too much.
UT Austin can see another jump given the Austin Hype. If they can keep delivering promising Career reports, pretty sure, Austin has become really enticing over the past 7 years and a lot of people who enquire are trying to get in too. I don't really know if this will happen but the applications there can surely see a jump. Rice might enjoy the heat from the fire in Austin too. Lots of Alums in Texas and pretty much rival schools despite historical difference in ranking by at least 6 ranks (13 this year from the looks of it).

jatinarora97 · Answer

In the US, which schools are actually considered the top 20 with good recognition? Rankings always fluctuate, and sometimes even M7 isn't among the top 7 colleges. Can someone, based on experience, identify the absolute best top 20 schools where joining them won't be a wrong decision?

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Businessconquerer · Answer

Go to the historical usnews ranking on GMATClub

bb  that chart needs fixing, it has some issues

That ranking can give you a better idea

bb · Answer

When you say based on experience, do you mean someone who has gone to all 20 of them? What kind of experience provides ABSOLUTE best? 
How about someone provides an absolute list of 20 best companies to invest and investing into them won't be a wrong decision?

jatinarora97 · Answer

Okay, so what I meant was, as an international applicant, we don’t know how Americans think or perceive colleges. All we can rely on are rankings. Let me give you an example from India. Let's say we have BITS and an IIT. If you ask anyone on the street to choose between these two, they’ll likely choose IIT because it’s prestigious, without even considering if it’s a top-ranked IIT or a newly opened one in a remote village, which might have fewer opportunities compared to BITS. Similarly, if Owen was ranked 27 last year and now it's 20, is it considered a top 20 school or top 30? Let’s say, on average, it's around 25. Even then, it's possible that in the US, someone may not know about other top-ranked colleges, but because Vandy is famous, they perceive Owen as definitely being a top college. I just wanted to understand, in general, when we think of American recruiters, they might not be checking rankings daily. So, in general perception, what are considered the top 20 colleges?

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Admissionado · Answer

jatinarora97 :

It's not that clear cut, but hopefully this helps:

There are tiers of schools mostly based on perception and historical ranking, and even these are somewhat subjective, especially with the lower tiers.

Tier I: Harvard, Stanford, Penn (Wharton)

Tier II: MIT, Columbia, Northwestern (Kellogg), Chicago (Booth)

Tier III. Yale SOM, Michigan, Berkeley (Haas), UCLA, Duke, Dartmouth (Tuck), NYU (Stern), Virginia (Darden)

Tier IV: Cornell, Georgetown, Texas (McCombs), Carnegie Mellon (Tepper), USC (Marshall)

That gets you to 20. Of course, you could make an argument to put other programs, such as UNC (Kenan-Flagler) and Washington (Foster) in there. Emory (Goizueta), Vanderbilt (Owen), Rice (Jones) Indiana (Kelly), and Notre Dame (Mendoza) are also very excellent programs that could round out the 20, especially if you start talking about particular areas of focus (e.g., finance, management, operations, etc.)

That's why people often refer to M7 (Tiers I and II), and T15 (Tiers I, II and III). Thereafter, it's very hard to categorize a school as definitively in T20, T25, T30. At that point, it simply doesn't really matter. It's just subjective labeling.

jatinarora97 · Answer

Thank you .. this is exactly what I was looking for.

I understand that T1 and T2 colleges are in completely different leagues altogether. But let's say given a choice between Tier 3 and Tier 4. How different is the learning experience? How much of a difference can they make in one's career? I have seen several students choose among these colleges based on scholarships, location and field etc., so I believe the cohort is mostly of the same caliber. Even in terms of average salaries, those from Emory, Owen, and UNC are comparable to those of Tier 3.

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Admissionado · Answer

jatinarora97 :

The learning experience is really not all that different. You can only "redesign" the MBA experience so much.

That said, you are correct in that factors like geography/location and field can be influencing factors. For example, going to NYU Stern is going to be mostly a finance-focused (field) experience in a very urban (campus) setting in a big East Cost city (location) with ~500 other students in your class (size). In contrast, Dartmouth Tuck is going to be more management focused (field) in a rural (campus) setting in a small Northeast college down (location) with ~300 students in your class (size).

People select these schools based on what kind of experience they want based on those differentiating factors rather than purely based on perceived ranking within those tiers.

AceOfQuant · Answer

I completely agree with your point about the learning experience being relatively similar across the board—there's only so much you can do to "redesign" an MBA. What really sets the  top business schools  apart often comes down to those other factors like geography and specialization. The business school rankings can give you a general idea of prestige, but they don’t always capture those nuances. For instance, the difference between a finance-heavy experience at NYU Stern versus a more management-focused curriculum at Dartmouth Tuck isn’t just about their positions in the MBA school rankings—it's about the type of career and lifestyle you’re aiming for.

2024 US News Rankings Winners & Losers: Stanford is #1, HBS is #6

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