ADMISSION STANDARDS
Admission Standards are used to measure the quality of incoming students. In any quality MBA program, students often learn as much from their classmates as they do from their professors.
Like the other categories, Admission Standards accounts for one third of the overall ranking score. Data is reported by the schools through our institutional survey.
After topping this category for three straight years, Indian Kelley (ranked No. 2 overall) fell to No. 2 in Admissions Standards. Bryant University’s online MBA program (No. 16 overall) led the category.
This category had the most methodological changes in this year’s ranking compared to last year, and you can read about the changes in more detail here. To calculate this category, we considered average undergraduate GPA (accounting for 30% of the category score), average years of work experience (25%), acceptance rate (15%), adjusted average admission test scores (10%), 6-year graduation rate (10%), and 1-year retention weight (10%).
You can find more detail on each of the metrics above in our supplemental ranking stories, which we will be rolling out in the coming weeks. Watch our online MBA ranking section at poetsandquants.com for the latest.
Below is the Admissions Standards rank (accounting for 33% of the overall rank) for all 57 schools.
Ranking Online MBA on Admissions Standards |
|||
Admissions Rank |
School |
Admissions Total |
2025 Overall Rank |
| 1 | Bryant University | 100.0000 | 16 |
| 2 | Indiana University (Kelley) | 99.9838 | 2 |
| 3 | University of Texas at Dallas (Jindal) | 99.7130 | 1 |
| 4 | Fairfield University (Dolan) | 99.2924 | 23 |
| 5 | University of Washington (Foster) | 92.6058 | 4 |
| 6 | Texas Tech University (Rawls) | 90.8073 | 35 |
| 7 | Jack Welch Management Institute | 86.8948 | 8 |
| 8 | University of Michigan (Ross) | 86.0354 | 2 |
| 9 | Auburn University (Harbert) | 83.3323 | 11 |
| 10 | University of Massachusetts at Amherst (Isenberg) | 82.9668 | 15 |
| 11 | University of Florida (Warrington) | 82.0731 | 10 |
| 12 | San Jose State University (Lucas) | 81.9588 | 34 |
| 13 | Worcester Polytechnic Institute | 81.3713 | 24 |
| 14 | Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper) | 79.5951 | 7 |
| 15 | University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business | 79.2847 | 6 |
| 16 | University of Cincinnati (Lindner) | 78.8432 | 38 |
| 17 | University of Nebraska-Lincoln | 77.9808 | 25 |
| 18 | Kennesaw State University (Coles) | 75.1554 | 46 |
| 19 | Florida International University | 74.7718 | 31 |
| 20 | University of South Florida (Muma) | 74.7262 | 17 |
| 21 | University of Iowa (Tippie) | 74.5005 | 27 |
| 22 | University of Denver (Daniels) | 74.4192 | 20 |
| 23 | Lehigh University | 73.9240 | 13 |
| 24 | Rice University (Jones) | 73.0419 | 5 |
| 25 | Creighton University (Heider) | 72.1305 | 40 |
| 26 | University of Wisconsin MBA Consortium | 71.6583 | 37 |
| 27 | University of Massachusetts Lowell (Manning) | 71.3396 | 43 |
| 28 | University of North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler) | 71.2966 | 14 |
| 29 | Hofstra University (Zarb) | 71.1815 | 9 |
| 30 | University of California-Davis | 70.7067 | 22 |
| 31 | VIllanova University | 70.2642 | 28 |
| 32 | University of Delaware (Lerner) | 70.1960 | 41 |
| 33 | Wake Forest University | 68.4086 | 25 |
| 34 | SUNY Oswego | 67.6823 | 51 |
| 35 | Bowling Green State University (Schmidthorst) | 63.9668 | 36 |
| 36 | North Carolina State University (Poole) | 63.0750 | 29 |
| 37 | University of Utah (Eccles) | 63.0049 | 18 |
| 38 | Rogers State University | 62.7004 | 49 |
| 39 | William & Mary (Mason) | 62.1119 | 19 |
| 40 | Santa Clara University (Leavey) | 62.0305 | 12 |
| 41 | University of Connecticut | 59.9760 | 33 |
| 42 | University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (Rollins) | 58.8184 | 47 |
| 43 | Syracuse University (Whitman) | 58.4396 | 30 |
| 44 | George Mason University (Costello) | 58.3730 | 52 |
| 45 | Louisiana State University (Ourso) | 57.9055 | 55 |
| 46 | Clemson University | 57.5744 | 54 |
| 47 | University of North Texas (Ryan) | 57.5147 | 57 |
| 48 | Seattle University (Albers) | 57.2530 | 56 |
| 49 | University of Maryland (Smith) | 55.5335 | 32 |
| 50 | Pepperdine University (Graziadio) | 55.0621 | 45 |
| 51 | Baylor University (Hankamer) | 54.6521 | 38 |
| 52 | Southern Methodist University (Cox) | 52.5274 | 21 |
| 53 | University of Michigan-Dearborn | 51.9790 | 42 |
| 54 | Drexel University (LeBow) | 51.1991 | 48 |
| 55 | Ohio University | 50.5663 | 44 |
| 56 | University of Missouri (Trulaske) | 42.3901 | 53 |
| 57 | American University (Kogod) | 26.2480 | 50 |
Continue reading:
- PAGE 6: How Schools Ranked on Career Impact
- PAGE 7: How Schools Ranked on Academic Experience
