The Wharton School tops U.S. News’ 2024 ranking for executive MBAs.
After holding the No. 2 spot for the last three years, The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania moved to the very top of U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of executive MBA programs in the United States.
It traded places with Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management (No. 2), which rose from No.3 to No. 1 in from last year’s ranking. Just a few miles up the road, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business ranked at No. 3, the same as last year.
U.S. News & World Report published its 2023-2024 ranking of MBA programs last week. Wharton ranked third in that list while Chicago Booth ranked first. Kellogg ranked second, the same as its EMBA showing.
THE BIGGEST LOSERS (AND WINNERS)
This year, U.S. News changed its methodology, causing plenty of wild swings up and down the MBA ranking. However, apart from a few standouts, the EMBA’s ranking result is fairly consistent with last year.
Marquette University posted the largest fall, down 10 spots to a four-way tie for No. 27. Only two other schools came close to that steep of a decline, and it wasn’t particularly close. Both Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business (No. 17) and Xavier University’s Williams College of Business (No. 27) dropped four places from last year.
U.S. News ranked 30 schools this year, down one from 2022-2023 and the same number as 2021-2022. Four schools ranked last year were not ranked for this list: University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business, Loyola University Chicago Quinlan School of Business, Pepperdine’s Graziadio Business School, and Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.
Meanwhile, the biggest winner was Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business, rising 12 spots to No. 19 and marking the biggest swing, up or down, of any school on the list. Gabelli ranked 68th overall in Best Business Schools and 76th in part-time MBAs. Its EMBA comes in at $119,000
Three schools that were unranked last year made the list this time: Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business ranked No. 26, and Pennsylvania State University Smeal College of Business and University of Washington Foster Business School were both ranked No. 27.
WHARTON’S TOP-RANKED EMBA
Since the last U.S. News EMBA ranking, Wharton made a huge move for an elite program: It launched a Global EMBA that would be 75% synchronous online. The program welcomed its first cohort in May.
“I’m not totally comfortable calling it an online degree, because that has this connotation of sitting in bed with your laptop watching videos. Here, 100% of the class time will be with one of our professors, and some of it will be in person,” Brian Bushee, Wharton’s senior vice dean of teaching and learning, told Poets&Quants in a previous interview.
“We don’t want to lose the fact that there is this requirement to get together five or six times during the two years in the program. Then the rest of the time, you’re online, but you’re also online synchronously with the other students and with professors.”
Wharton also offers traditional, in-person executive MBAs at both its Philadelphia and San Francisco campuses. Cost for all three programs is the same, $214,800.
Along with the regular MBA rankings, U.S. News also published a series of specialized rankings. The Wharton School ranked in the top 10 on 11 different specialties including first in finance, EMBA, and real estate; second in accounting and marketing; fourth in business analytics, and fifth in management.
The Wharton School had 488 EMBA candidates in 2022 according to U.S. News ranking data, 251 were accepted and 234 enrolled. Its acceptance rate was 51.4% and the average work experience was 12 years.
The EMBA ranking (officially the 2024 ranking, though it is based on 2022 data and was released in 2023) is based on six factors, up from five in previous years. By far the most important, accounting for 50% of each school's rank, is a peer assessment score based on surveys of B-school deans and MBA program directors, asking them to rate other programs on a 1-5 scale.
A DELAYED RANKING RELEASE
The U.S. News Ranking was originally scheduled to be released on April 18, three weeks later than usual. A rankings revolt by leading law and medical schools – that has yet to spread to the business school community – led to the delay.
But, the delayed publish date was held back another full week after many deans screamed foul after being given an embargoed copy of the ranking.
See the complete ranking below.
DON’T MISS: BERKELEY HAAS RETURNS TO THE TOP OF U.S. NEWS’ PART-TIME MBA RANKING AND KELLOGG ABROAD: HOW MBAS LEARN REAL-WORLD IMPACT THROUGH TRAVEL
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