Michigan State University’s Broad College of Business
P&Q’s COMPOSITE OF 3 EMBA RANKINGS
Four of the five M7s with EMBA programs made it to the top of this year’s composite ranking, as you would expect from the so-called Magnificent 7. Columbia Business School dropped for the third straight year after topping P&Q’s list in 2021 and coming in second in 2022. It dropped to 13th on 2023’s list and to 14th last year when it stopped participating in the Financial Times’ ranking. CBS finished fourth on U.S. News’ latest EMBA ranking.
Our methodology rewards schools that participate in all three of the rankings we use in our composite.
Our composite approach is meant to smooth out fluctuating results from other rankings’ methodologies. We attach different weights to the rankings to reflect their differing levels of respect in the market.
U.S. News and FT, both rankings that have been around a long time and are relatively trusted, are each given a 40% weight.
We replaced Fortune with QS’ ranking after Fortune didn’t publish a fresh EMBA ranking for 2025. QS was given a 20% weight.
For each of the three rankings, the top school was awarded an index score of 100 points, the second place was awarded 99 points, third 98 points and so on. We then calculated a weighted average for each school based on their index scores for each ranking.
For example, Wharton earned 100 points (weighted 40%) for its No. 1 U.S. News ranking, 99 points (40%) for its No. 2 FT finish, and 98 points (20%) for its No. 3 finish in QS. Its weighted average was 99.2.
(To score schools from Financial Times’ and QS’ Global EMBA rankings, we consider only stand-alone programs based in the United States. The highest-ranked U.S. school is assigned a “1” for the FT portion of our composite ranking, while the second highest is assigned a “2” and so on.)
THREE DIFFERENT RANKINGS, THREE DIFFERENT METHODOLOGIES
Each of the rankings we include in our composite are based on vastly different methodologies, making oranges to oranges comparisons more difficult across them.
Like U.S. News’ full-time MBA specialization rankings, the executive MBA list is based solely on ratings by business school deans and directors of AACSB-accredited MBA programs.
Respondents are asked to nominate up to 15 programs for excellence from the list of business schools surveyed. Schools receiving the most votes are numerically ranked based on the number of nominations they received, as long as the program received seven or more nominations.
The Financial Times surveys both schools and alumni for its ranking, collecting data on 18 different metrics. Its highest-weighted metrics are related to compensation – average salary three years after course completion accounts for 15% of the ranking while amount of salary increase accounts for 16%. (Wharton EMBA’s reported an average salary of $362,807.) Other metrics include work experience, female faculty, international students and more. It also looks at ESG, net zero teaching, and carbon footprint metrics.
For 2025, 4,465 alumni completed the FT ranking survey providing data on salary increases after the program, career progress, and aims achieved. FT also considers research published by the school’s full-time faculty.
QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) is a British-based admissions events company that conducts rankings for online, executive, and full-time MBA programs. It also ranks MBA specializations and business master’s degrees.
QS ranks EMBAs based on five metric groups, with data collected from its two long-standing surveys – the QS Global Employer Survey and the QS Academic Survey, according to its methodology.
Its five metric groups include Employer Reputation (30% weight), Academic Reputation & Thought Leadership (25%), Career Progression (20%), Executive Profile (15%), and Class Diversity (10%).
BIGGEST JUMPS AND DIVES
To appear in P&Q’s composite ranking of Executive MBAs, a program must be a stand-alone program based in the U.S. and be ranked by at least one of the three ranking agencies used in our composite in 2025.
Overall, 72 U.S. programs were ranked by P&Q for 2025-2026 compared to 63 the previous year. Of those, 14 were ranked by all three publications in the composite while 30 were ranked by two. That leaves 28 programs that were only ranked by one institution, accounting for a lot of jumps and slides toward the lower half of the ranking.
Twenty EMBA programs on this year’s list weren’t ranked last year, largely because of their appearance on the QS ranking which we did not use for the previous iteration.
University of Southern California (Marshall) – which finished at No. 18 – saw the biggest jump, rising 20 spots over last year. That’s because Marshall was not ranked by either U.S. News or Financial Times last year, while it appeared on two lists for this cycle – U.S. News (landing at No. 17) and QS (No. 10).
Marquette University rose 16 spots to No. 33 with a respectable showing in U.S. News (No. 16) after it wasn’t ranked by the publication last year. University of Miami (Herbert) rose 14 to No. 47.
Biggest Jumps & Slides For P&Q Ranked EMBAS |
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BIGGEST JUMPS |
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2025 P&Q Rank |
School |
2024 P&Q rank |
YOY Change |
| 18 | University of Southern California (Marshall) | 38 | 20 |
| 33 | Marquette University | 49 | 16 |
| 47 | University of Miami (Herbert) | 61 | 14 |
| 14 | University of Utah (Eccles) | 26 | 12 |
| 22 | Michigan State (Eli Broad) | 34 | 12 |
| 16 | University of California, Berkeley (Haas) | 27 | 11 |
BIGGEST SLIDES |
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2025 P&Q Rank |
School |
2024 P&Q rank |
YOY Change |
| 72 | Kennesaw State (Coles) | 59 | -13 |
| 24 | Fordham University (Gabelli) | 10 | -14 |
| 37 | University of Tennessee (Haslam) | 22 | -15 |
| 38 | Georgia Institute of Technology (Scheller) | 21 | -17 |
| 53 | University of Georgia (Terry) | 36 | -17 |
| 68 | Brigham Young University (Marriott) | 43 | -25 |
| 70 | Rochester Institute of Technology (Saunders) | 45 | -25 |
| 53 | Rice University (Jones) | 20 | -33 |
| 68 | University of South Florida (Muma) | 35 | -33 |
For the sliders, University of South Florida (Muma) and Rice University (Jones) tied for the longest drops, each dropping 33 spots to No. 68 and No. 53 respectively. Rice wasn’t ranked by either U.S. News or Financial Times which are weighted higher in our composite and was the 43rd highest U.S. program in QS. (Last year it ranked 21st for U.S. programs in Financial Times and 17th in Fortune).
It’s a similar story for Muma. It only showed up in the QS ranking this cycle, landing at the 60th best program in the U.S. While it also was in one of the three rankings last year, it finished at No. 10 in Fortune’s ranking.
Besides our updated composite list, our ranking table shows prospective students how schools fared in each of the three rankings for easy comparison. (Click through to pages 3 and 4 for the full list).
CHOOSING THE RIGHT EMBA
The biggest, most prestigious business schools can and do attract many international executives to their EMBA programs as well as domestic execs who live at least a plane ride away.
But, many EMBA prospects look for well regarded programs near their home turfs – perhaps a car ride away for the weekend classes. They tend to be older and more experienced than students in full-time programs, and the majority are looking to accelerate their careers in their current industry or organization, not necessarily to pivot. Some just want to improve their own leadership and management skills to better function in their current positions.
For these would-be applicants, Executive MBA rankings should be considered a useful guide, not a deciding factor. Since many EMBA choices are made by geography, rankings place a smaller role than they might for those researching full-time or online MBAs.
If a prospective student lives in Atlanta, for example, they’d surely consider Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, which ranks No. 13 in our composite. There’s also Georgia Institute of Technology Scheller College of Business (No. 38), and Georgia State University J. Mack Robinson College of Business (No. 58). Kennesaw State University Coles College of Business (No. 72) is about 30 minutes north, meaning most sessions can be attended without overnight travel while University of Georgia Terry College of Business (No. 53) in Athens, is about a 90-minute drive.
EMBA prospects wanting to stick close to New York City have no shortage of options. Considering just the ranked programs from P&Q’s composite, there’s two NYC programs in the top 10: New York University’s Stern School of Business (No. 8) and Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business (No. 10). There’s also Columbia Business School at No. 15 and Fordham University (Gabelli) at No. 24.
For most schools, it is more important for a program to be ranked among the best, rather than what the program’s actual rank might be. The networking value of a regional program can provide as much bang for the buck as a school with a national or global reputation. In other words, think of a ranking as something of a seal of approval, third-party validation of a program’s quality and strength.
Poets&Quants For Execs’ full composite ranking of the best U.S. EMBA programs is presented on the next three pages.
NEXT PAGE: P&Q’s Top Executive MBA programs in the U.S., No. 1-25
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