- Category: Features
- Written by Nick Selbe
-
The Best Business Schools Of 2016
The business world is full of overused cliches, yet still rooted in some truth — "It's a win-win," "I'm a team player" and "At the end of the day" are all sayings that get thrown around non-stop. A business school grad who has the right phrases committed to memory has a leg up in a competitive job market competition.
Before worrying about a revamped vocabulary, though, the aspiring businessperson has a sizable hurdle to clear — getting through business school. And getting through business school involves choosing the right business school, and for that, StartClass has ranked the top 25 MBA programs for 2016.
Our list is ranked using a weighted average of business school rankings awarded by six publications: Business Insider, Businessweek, The Economist, The Financial Times, Forbes and U.S. News. Multiple years were taken into account to measure consistency over time.
One of the primary factors in evaluating a business school is its average post-graduation salary. This makes sense considering the sizable difference in salary for people with a business degree compared to those with only a bachelor's degree.
Business school graduates from more than half of the 50 states have average salaries over $60,000. The national median salary for those with just a bachelor's degree is under $50,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
With these figures in mind, it is clearly important for undergrads to choose the right business school. What's also clear is they can't go wrong if they settle on any of the following 25 programs.
#25. Georgetown University McDonough School of Business
Average post-graduation salary: $102,096
Acceptance rate: 47.4 percent
#24. Michigan State University Broad College of Business
Average post-graduation salary: $95,000
Acceptance rate: 28.5 percent
#23. Rice University Jones Graduate School of Business
Average post-graduation salary: $101,229
Acceptance rate: 26.2 percent
#22. Indiana University-Bloomington Kelley School of Business
Average post-graduation salary: $102,000
Acceptance rate: 33.1 percent
#21. University of Washington Foster School of Business
Average post-graduation salary: $102,722
Acceptance rate: 22.9 percent
#20. Emory University Goizueta Business School
Average post-graduation salary: $107,220
Acceptance rate: 30.7 percent
#19. University of Michigan Ross School of Business
Average post-graduation salary: $115,315
Acceptance rate: N/A
#18. University of Texas Austin McCombs School of Business
Average post-graduation salary: $107,272
Acceptance rate: 28.5 percent
#17. Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business
Average post-graduation salary: $114,000
Acceptance rate: 31.2 percent
#16. UNC Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler Business School
Average post-graduation salary: $109,390
Acceptance rate: 38.8 percent
#15. Cornell University Johnson Graduate School of Management
Average post-graduation salary: $110,900
Acceptance rate: 30 percent
#14. NYU Stern Business School
Average post-graduation salary: $112,096
Acceptance rate: 18.1 percent
#13. UCLA Anderson School of Management
Average post-graduation salary: $111,000
Acceptance rate: 17.8 percent
#12. University of Virginia Darden School of Business
Average post-graduation salary: $112,257
Acceptance rate: 26 percent
#11. Duke University Fuqua School of Business
Average post-graduation salary: $111,000
Acceptance rate: 25.1 percent
#10. Yale School of Management
Average post-graduation salary: $110,000
Acceptance rate: 23.7 percent
#9. Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business
Average post-graduation salary: $117,860
Acceptance rate: 22.1 percent
#8. University of Pennsylvania Wharton Business School
Average post-graduation salary: $125,000
Acceptance rate: 20.7 percent
#7. Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management
Average post-graduation salary: $113,000
Acceptance rate: 23.2 percent
#6. Columbia Business School
Average post-graduation salary: $119,400
Acceptance rate: 18.2 percent
#5. UC Berkeley Haas School of Business
Average post-graduation salary: $120,000
Acceptance rate: 13.2 percent
#4. MIT Sloan Business School
Average post-graduation salary: $119,639
Acceptance rate: 13.8 percent
#3. University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Average post-graduation salary: $120,000
Acceptance rate: 23.5 percent
#2. Stanford Graduate School of Business
Average post-graduation salary: $125,000
Acceptance rate: 7.1 percent
#1. Harvard Business School
Average post-graduation salary: $125,000
Acceptance rate: 11 percent