Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management claimed the top spot in the Fortune | Education Best Executive MBA Programs ranking for 2024. The ranking included 52 U.S. based programs.
Kellogg rose six places from the last Fortune ranking of U.S. EMBAs.
Columbia Business School came in second on the Fortune list, followed by University of Pennsylvania’s The Wharton School (No. 3). University of Michigan Ross School of Business (No. 4), and University of Chicago Booth School of Business (No. 5).
Fortune | Education Top 10 U.S. EMBAs of 2024 |
|||
| 2024 Rank | School | Location | Total Cost |
| 1 | Northwestern University (Kellogg) | Miami, FL; Evanston, IL | $195,934 |
| 2 | Columbia University | New York, NY | $248,280 |
| 3 | University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) | Philadelphia, PA; San Francisco, CA | $230,100 |
| 4 | University of Michigan (Ross) | Ann Arbor, MI; Los Angeles, CA | $183,500 |
| 5 | University of Chicago (Booth) | Chicago, IL; London; Hong Kong | $181,083 |
| 6 | University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler) | Chapel Hill, NC | $125,589 |
| 7 | University of California–Los Angeles (Anderson) | Los Angeles, CA | $192,720 |
| 8 | New York University (Stern) | New York, NY; Washington, DC | $205,250 |
| 9 | Texas A&M University–College Station (Mays) | Houston, TX | $124,000 |
| 10 | University of South Florida (Muma) | Tampa, FL | $47,500 |
DIFFERENT RANKING METHODOLOGIES, DIFFERENT RESULTS
If the top 10 schools sound familiar, they are largely the same schools that appear at the top of the U.S. News & World Report’s 2024-2025 ranking of U.S. EMBA programs which was released in April.
Fortune’s EMBA ranking is the second to come out this week. QS’ 2024 ranking of global Executive MBA programs was released July 17, and evaluated 194 programs from all over the world.
The U.S. News and Fortune lists look at U.S. programs alone: U.S. News ranked 24 programs while Fortune’s ranked 52. By comparison, QS’ ranking included 67 U.S. programs.
Because all the rankings have different weights, metrics, and methods of collecting data, no two rankings lists are ever identical. It helps to look at them as a collection to see which schools rise to the top of each. Schools breaking the top tier of multiple rankings is a good signal to the quality of its EMBA.
While you’ll find a lot of the same schools at or near the top of all three of the major EMBA rankings for 2024, there are some key differences. See our comparison of the rankings’ top schools in the chart below.
Comparison Of Fortune, US News, and QS EMBA Rankings |
|||
| School | Fortune 2024 Rank | U.S. News 2025 Rank | QS 2024 Rank U.S. (Global) |
| Northwestern University (Kellogg) | 1 | 2 | 3 (7) |
| Columbia University | 2 | 4 | 8 (18) |
| University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) | 3 | 1 | 2 (6) |
| University of Michigan (Ross) | 4 | 9 | 11 (26) |
| University of Chicago (Booth) | 5 | 3 | 6 (13) |
| University of North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler) | 6 | 14 | 15 (46) |
| UCLA Anderson | 7 | 10 | 7 (17) |
| New York University (Stern) | 8 | 6 | 9 (20) |
| Texas A&M University (Mays) | 9 | NR | 22 (61) |
| University of South Florida (Muma) | 10 | NR | 63 (161-170) |
| MIT (Sloan) | NR | 8 | 1 (4) |
| Yale School of Managment | 22 | 16 | 4 (8) |
| UC-Berkeley (Haas) | NR | 7 | 5 (11) |
| USC (Marshall) | 14 | NR | 10 (23) |
| Duke (Fuqua) | 11 | 5 | 12 (36) |
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, for example, was the top U.S. EMBA on QS’ list but eighth on U.S. News.’ Fortune didn’t rank it at all, despite it being a highly regarded, quality program.
Yale School of Management ranked No. 4 for U.S. schools on QS, but 22nd in Fortune and 16th in U.S. News. And, while University of South Florida (Muma) cracked the top 10 in Fortune, U.S. News didn’t rank it and QS ranked it No. 63 for U.S. programs.
NORTHWESTERN KELLOGG’S EMBA
By any measure, Kellogg’s EMBA is top notch. It topped P&Q’s own composition ranking in 2022 and finished at No. 4 in 2023.
Kellogg enrolls two EMBA cohorts (one in January and one in September) for each of its two programs – in Evanston, Ill., and Miami. With a price tag of $195,934, the total cost for the two-year program isn’t inexpensive. But the most highly ranked EMBA programs are premium products for schools that typically treat students as if they were staying at a five-star hotel. They are taught by the best faculty, wined and dined and put in lush accommodations for their overnight stays.
Kellogg has the longest-running healthcare business program in the country, and its Healthcare at Kellogg (HCAK) Deep Dive Program combines students from across its MBA programs, including EMBAs, and connects them with the school’s 4,000 alumni working in the industry.
Kellogg’s EMBA is also popular for entrepreneurial executives. Two of its Class of 2023 EMBAs, one an investor, one an entrepreneur, formed the Kellogg EMBA Entrepreneur <> Investor Initiative to connect founders with classmates and alumni who want to invest in their startups.
“Kellogg was the one and only university I had in mind for two powerful reasons. The first is, of course, the people. The second was its entrepreneurial mindset,” says Luis Hernán Hormazábal of Peru, EMBA ‘23, and CEO of Lambda Capital Advisors which he founded in 2016. He pursued his Kellogg EMBA to help him grow his business.
“That kind of spirit of always thinking about how to make another business is super enrichful.”
FORTUNE’S RANKING METHODOLOGY
For its ranking, Fortune uses data collected via school surveys, figures available on school websites, and information collected from companies and executives.
A quarter of the ranking is based on the Fortune 1000 Score – the number of a school’s C-level executives from any school MBA program at Fortune 1000 companies, the magazine’s annual list of the 1000 largest companies in the U.S. Another 15% is based on the average number of Google searches for a business school per month, converted to an annual metric. Another 5% comes from the school’s previous Fortune ranking.
The eight remaining metrics are collected from the schools:
- Graduation Rate (2020-23): 8.5%
- One-Year Retention Rate (2022-23): 8.5%
- Acceptance Rate (2023-24): 7%
- Yield (2023-24): 7%
- Average # of Years of Work Experience (2023-24 Entrants): 7%
- Average # of Years of Management Experience (2023-24 Entrants): 7%
- Size of 2022-2023 Graduating Class: 5%
- Approximate Total Tuition: 5%
See here for a more detailed discussion of the methodologies of other EMBA rankings. Click here for Fortune’s full ranking, or go to the next page to see the ranking table.
NEXT PAGE: Fortune | Education Best Executive MBAs For 2024
