Poets&Quants’ Ranking Of The Best Online MBA Programs Of 2026

Michigan Ross online MBA students connecting at an -in-person residency in -Ann Arbor. Courtesy photo

A TROVE OF DATA FOR PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS

More than a ranking, we’ve always viewed this project as a massive data-gathering process to help prospective students make better school decisions. So be sure to check out all of our supplementary articles digging into that data. We’ll be rolling more of these out in the days and weeks ahead.

Of the 7,957 2025 OMBA graduates who responded to this year’s survey, 31.6% reported earning a promotion directly because of their degree. Some 46.8% reported getting a pay bump. But, not every OMBA is created equal, and you can see how every school scored on these two all-important factors in this story: How Online MBA Grads Rated Their Degrees For Career Impact.

Or, maybe a program’s learning experience is a more important factor in your program search. For our Academic Experience category, we ask program alumni more than 15 questions about their level of satisfaction on a number of criteria. These range from professor quality and responsiveness, ability to make meaningful connections, and whether or not they would recommend the program to others.

School specific data for each of these questions can be found in this story: How Online MBA Grads Rated Their Program’s Learning Experience.

Below is the full ranking of the top 61 online MBA programs for 2026.

Then, click through the following pages to see how schools ranked in the three ranking categories: Admissions Standards, Career Outcomes, and Academic Experience.

P&Q’s Best U.S. Online MBA Programs For 2026
2026 Rank	School	Final Score	2025 Rank	YOY Change
1	Indiana University (Kelley)	100.0	2	1
2	University of Texas at Dallas (Jindal)	99.9	1	-1
3	University of Michigan (Ross)	99.4	2	-1
4	University of Washington (Foster)	98.0	4	0
5	Hofstra University (Zarb)	93.3	9	4
6	Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper)	91.6	7	1
7	Auburn University (Harbert)	87.6	11	4
8	University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business	86.7	6	-2
9	Jack Welch Management Institute	86.6	8	-1
10	University of Florida (Warrington)	85.5	10	0
11	Case Western Reserve University (Weatherhead)	85.3	NR	NA
12	University of North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler)	84.8	14	2
13	University of Utah (Eccles)	84.4	18	5
14	Wake Forest University	84.2	25	11
15	Villanova University	83.4	28	13
16	Lehigh University	83.2	13	-3
17	Fairfield University (Dolan)	82.6	23	6
18	University of Wisconsin MBA Consortium	82.0	37	19
19	Bryant University	81.7	16	-3
20	Rice University (Jones)	80.3	5	-15
21	University of Massachusetts at Amherst (Isenberg)	78.8	15	-6
22	North Carolina State University (Poole)	78.5	29	7
23	Bowling Green State University (Schmidthorst)	77.6	36	13
24	Santa Clara University (Leavey)	77.3	12	-12
25	University of Connecticut	77.1	33	8
26	University of Iowa (Tippie)	76.5	27	1
27	University of South Florida (Muma)	76.3	17	-10
28	Clemson University	76.1	54	26
29	University of Denver (Daniels)	75.7	20	-9
30	Texas Tech University (Rawls)	75.1	35	5
31	University of Cincinnati (Lindner)	74.4	38	7
32	University of Delaware (Lerner)	74.1	41	9
33	University of Nebraska-Lincoln	73.8	25	-8
34	Baylor University (Hankamer)	73.7	38	4
35	Pepperdine University (Graziadio)	73.2	45	10
36	University of Maryland (Smith)	73.1	32	-4
37	Syracuse University (Whitman)	72.6	30	-7
38	William & Mary (Mason)	72.5	19	-19
39	University of Michigan-Dearborn	72.0	42	3
40	San Jose State University (Lucas)	70.6	34	-6
41	American University (Kogod)	69.6	50	9
42	Longwood University	69.3	NR	NA
43	Ohio University	69.2	44	1
44	Rogers State University	68.8	49	5
51	Florida International University	62.1	31	-20
45	Southern Methodist University (Cox)	68.2	21	-24
46	University of Massachusetts Lowell (Manning)	68.0	43	-3
47	University of California-Davis	67.1	22	-25
48	MIssissippi State University	66.3	NR	NA
49	Louisiana State University (Ourso)	64.8	55	6
50	Creighton University (Heider)	63.3	40	-10
52	Temple University (Fox)	59.6	NR	NA
53	SUNY Oswego	59.1	51	-2
54	Drexel University (LeBow)	58.8	48	-6
55	University of Missouri (Trulaske)	58.2	53	-2
56	George Mason University (Costello)	57.4	52	-4
57	Seattle University (Albers)	54.3	56	-1
58	University of Houston (Bauer)	53.7	NR	NA
59	University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (Rollins)	51.4	47	-12
60	Kennesaw State University (Coles)	45.3	46	-14
61	University of North Texas (Ryan)	26.7	57	-4

Full Ranking Results:

PAGE 4: Full Ranking: The Best Online MBA Programs of 2026
PAGE 5: How Schools Ranked on Admissions Standards
PAGE 6: How Schools Ranked on Career Impact
PAGE 7: How Schools Ranked on Academic Experience

© Copyright 2025 Poets & Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets & Quants, please submit your request HERE.