Wharton is back! After disappearing from the FT MBA Ranking in 2023 for purportedly failing to secure enough alumni survey responses, the business school whose MBA has ranked #1 in the Financial Times more than any other school – eleven times between 1999 and 2022 – has come straight back in at the top.

Wharton has displaced Columbia Business School, which reached the top position for the first time last year but in 2024 drops back to #3. The one-year MBA programme at INSEAD stays at #2, demonstrating remarkable consistency in an otherwise volatile FT ranking. The international school with campuses in Fontainebleau, Singapore and Abu Dhabi has only failed to make the top 3 once since 2016.

As for Italy’s SDA Bocconi – Mamma Mia! The school has been making steady progress in the various FT business school rankings in recent years. As recently as 2020 they ranked #29 in the FT MBA ranking, but the stunning new campus and a place among the top 5 programmes in terms of Value for Money are making a difference.

IESE Business School completes the overall top 5, which means European business schools are in the majority at the top of the table.

But the fortunes of arguably the two most prestigious US business schools will ensure that everyone will remember the 2024 FT MBA Ranking – even those schools that will want to forget them!

The biggest surprise of this year’s results must surely belong to Harvard Business School and Stanford GSB. Between them they have held the top spot in the FT rankings ten times, though last year they shared the #4 position. But HBS has fallen out of the top 10, to an unprecedented position of #11.

They might take some comfort in the fact that Stanford GSB fell to #23. That’s right, the most selective MBA on the planet this year sits below the other leading West Coast business schools as well as many schools from Europe and Asia.

What happened?

With Wharton, HBS and Stanford GSB boast the highest weighted salaries every year, but where once average salary three years after graduation and salary increase from before the MBA accounted for 40% of the FT weighting, this figure is now down to 32%.

Even so, the MBA at Stanford GSB has the best alumni network rank and was second among 100 schools for career progress and career services . Students gave them the highest marks for aims achieved, and an irresistible 9.975 for overall satisfaction.

So what gives? How does the school that enjoys an industry-record 96% yield on offers made to MBA applicants come in at #23 on the FT ranking? Beyond the fact that the score for overall satisfaction does not count in the FT methodology, the GSB was 99th for sector diversity among students. Did they really only admit strategy consultants from MBB, associates from PE firms, and a handful of talented folks from the big tech firms?

When Fortuna Admissions did a deep dive into the backgrounds of the Stanford MBA Class of 2023, the 423 admits came from ALL walks of life. So we’re sceptical.

The school presumably lost points for international faculty, worth 3% in the FT weightings. The box simply says 0 †, with an explanation at the bottom of the table that says ‘No data available from the school for this category.’ Did someone forget to provide that number, or was not prompted by the FT to complete the missing information. Or did Stanford GSB choose to withheld the demographics of their professors.

Whatever the reason, according to the FT data both Stanford and HBS are way behind other schools when it comes to ESG and net zero teaching, ranking 94th and 90th respectively. That comes as a surprise, particularly for the GSB which is one of the leading institutions for CSR.

The FT asks schools to quantify the number of hours devoted to net zero teaching. Let’s just say that the answers they receive from some schools are … wishful.

So is the FT MBA Ranking of 2024 avant-garde, or crazy?

Beyond HBS and Stanford, many of the schools in the top 20 are those we typically see from one year to the next. Northwestern Kellogg, MIT Sloan and Chicago Booth are all in the top 10, with Cornell continuing its strong performance and London Business School making a sizeable jump to reclaim its position at the top table.

They are followed by many of the US business schools that are often described as the S10, including Dartmouth Tuck, Duke Fuqua, Yale SOM, Darden, UCLA Anderson, Berkeley Haas and NYU Stern.

HEC Paris put in a strong performance, climbing 5 places to #12, and Esade Business School and IE Madrid ensured that Spain has three schools in the top 20. Their MBA programs welcome over 95% international students, and the very international faculty also gores down well with the FT methodology.

Indeed, with their business school rankings the FT has always taken the measure of the wider institution. From the % faculty with doctorates and a research rank to net zero teaching / #ESG and the diversity of the board, the multiple criteria of the FT methodology have shifted away from a weighting driven by post-MBA salaries.

But when you look at the 2024 results, you wonder whether this is an insightful ranking of the world’s best MBA programs, or names drawn from a hat.

In the coming week, BlueSky Thinking will take a deep dive into the FT results. We’ll be looking at country by country trends, and analysing the performance of schools on individual weightings.