Bloomberg Businessweek Business School Rankings 2022-2023 Key Takeaways

Bloomberg Businessweek’s 2022-2023 Best B-Schools ranks the top business schools globally by region, charting assessments of programs in the U.S., Europe, Asia-Pacific region, and Canada through a rigorous analysis of data and survey responses.

This year, the ranking covers 117 business schools. To qualify, programs had to be taught primarily in English. Bloomberg Businessweek surveyed 6,422 students, 11,304 alumni, and 778 employers, and also weighed compensation and employment data to determine schools’ scores.

The top five of the U.S. business schools ranking sees the same schools as last year’s, with some slight shuffling. The Stanford Graduate School of Business maintained the top spot, scoring an 88 (out of 100) overall. Chicago Booth moved up from fourth to tie for second with Harvard Business School, which had ranked third last year. Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management advanced to the fourth spot. Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business slipped from second to fifth with a score of 84.4 this year.

MIT’s Sloan School of Management landed in sixth and The Wharton School moved up two spots from last year to seventh. Columbia Business School occupies the eighth position. UVA’s Darden School of Business stayed in ninth place while Yale School of Management cracked the top ten with a score of 82.7.

Here is a quick glance at this year’s U.S. top 10 (with the addition of 2021-22 rankings in parentheses).

In regards to the ranking of European business schools, Switzerland’s IMD was ranked first in Europe for the third year in a row. INSEAD rose again to the second spot, with IESE Business School slipping slightly to third. London Business School moved back up, taking fourth this year. SDA Bocconi landed in spot five after claiming third last year.

Here is a look at this year’s European top 10 (with 2021-22 rankings in parentheses).

Key Takeaways from the Bloomberg Businessweek Business School Rankings 2022-2023

Clear Admit’s Co-Founder, Graham Richmond, offered the following observations on the rankings.

1. Stanford, Startups & Silicon Valley.

   Stanford retains its spot on top, with high marks in both compensation and entrepreneurship. This performance may have quite a bit to do with geography in light of salaries in the Bay Area and the sheer amount of entrepreneurial activity. At the same time, the program’s scores for ‘learning’ (89) are very strong as well, suggesting a supportive intellectual environment, consistent with their reputation.

2. Booth & HBS Leapfrog Tuck to Tie for 2nd Place.

   These two top programs were given strong numbers across the board – but particularly in entrepreneurship – allowing them to move past Dartmouth Tuck.

3. Yale & Wharton Rising.

   Beyond some minor shuffling of positions, the schools listed among the top-10 remain virtually identical, save one change: Yale SOM enters the top-10 this year with Berkeley Haas falling out (dropping from #7 to #14). Within the top-10, it’s also worth noting that Wharton moved up from #9 to #7, leapfrogging the likes of Columbia and Berkeley to get there.  At the same time, it does seem a bit odd to have Wharton sitting at the back end of the top-10, which is not consistent with the applicant behavior we see on DecisonWire.

4. 15 out of top 16 Make Both Bloomberg & US News.

   The top-16 programs are almost identical to what we see in the US News ranking in terms of which schools are represented – with the only exception being US News‘s inclusion of CMU Tepper vs. Bloomberg BusinessWeek‘s inclusion of USC Marshall. This underlines a critical point that Clear Admit has been making for years; the exact ordinal positioning of programs is less important than the consistency with which a given school shows up in the top-16 across all major rankings.

5. Georgia Tech Scheller on the Move.

   Georgia Tech jumped from #29 to #18 this year, cracking the top-20 and settling in alongside regional rival Emory Goizueta, which sits at #17.

6. Diversity Index Still a Work In Progress.

   The Bloomberg Businessweek ranking uses the GMAT test taker pool to set benchmarks regarding proportional representation of minorities. Of course, to the extent that minority candidates might be pursuing other exams (GRE), or even waivers, there is some risk in basing the index around the GMAT test taker population. With that said, the diversity component of the ranking still doesn’t seem to be making much of an impact in the overall ranking. It should be noted that the Wharton School is the only top-10 (overall) program to also place in the top-10 for Bloomberg’s diversity index.

7. IMD Again Takes the Crown in Europe.

   Over in Europe, IMD retains the top spot for the third year in a row. The top five is rounded out with INSEAD, IESE, London Business School, and SDA Bocconi. Programs like Oxford, Cambridge, and Esade also showed up in the top 10. While some may debate the specific ordering of these programs, few would argue against their inclusion in the top 10.

A note on methodology. Bloomberg Businessweek surveys graduating students, recent alumni, and companies that recruit MBAs for their U.S. business school ranking. The surveys are designed to index five key components of a U.S. business school education: compensation, learning, networking, entrepreneurship and diversity. The rankings weigh each index according to the survey respondents, asking students, alumni, and recruiters which aspects of their business school experience mattered most. The indexes for U.S. schools this year were calculated as follows: compensation, 37.4%; learning, 25.5%; entrepreneurship, 17.4%; networking, 11.6%; and diversity, 8%. For more about the surveys and other factors in the methodology, see here.