The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School claimed sole possession of the 2025 US News and World Report MBA rankings.
Wharton edged past Stanford — which now shares second with Northwestern’s Kellogg School. Rounding out the top five were Chicago Booth and MIT Sloan.
For elite schools, movement is marginal. But further down the list, volatility was more pronounced.
American University’s Kogod School of Business surged 27 places to 58th. William & Mary and St. Louis University each dropped 21 spots, driven by fluctuations in employment rates, GMAT scores or cohort sizes.
MBA rankings remain a fixture of the admissions ecosystem, shaping perceptions and influencing choices — often before prospective students have fully considered what they need from a program.
Rankings like US News still carry weight — with deans, employers and especially applicants. So what exactly are they measuring? And are they worth trusting as a guide to a six-figure investment?
Half of US News’ formula is based on outcomes — salaries, bonuses and employment rates three months after graduation. Wharton excels here: its graduates earn a median starting pay of more than $200,000 and over 90 per cent are employed within three months.
This formula rewards short-term, quantifiable success — but it also raises questions about what gets left out.
“When a scout I trust and respect recommends a baseball player, I view him more favorably than an individual who lacks a positive report,” says Katie Krall, who received her MBA from Chicago Booth in 2022, a school ranked consistently highly in the US News list.
Krall says rankings and brand prestige played a key role in her decision to pursue her MBA at Booth.
“Employers recognize the qualifications and effort it takes to get into a top-tier business school and see that as a harbinger of the impact the applicant may have within the company,” she says.
That reputation, she adds, has translated into long-term value.
“Booth was one of the greatest personal and professional investments of my life,” she said.
Still, the link between rankings and outcomes isn’t always linear. For some, the degree matters less than what you do with it.
Junaid Lughmani, who graduated from the Haas School of Business at Berkeley in 2023, describes a more nuanced experience. Haas placed 11th in this year’s US News list.
“Rankings played a big role in my decision-making,” he says.
“Like in business, where you need top talent to succeed, it’s the same with schools. I wanted the best peers and professors around me.”
But when it came to employment, brand power only went so far.
“I didn’t go through traditional recruiting channels. I found my post-MBA job through personal connections in New York,” he says.
“From what I have seen, the school name can open doors. But ultimately, it matters more who you are and what you can do.”
Lughmani says the Berkeley Haas experience lived up to its promise — though not always in ways captured by rankings.
“Coming from New York, I thought it would be good to go west for my MBA and get exposure to tech,” he says.
“Naturally there were a lot of people into tech, but I didn’t realise how significant the engineering-first culture was at the school.”
“Berkeley is a very unique place,” he adds.
“You are never bored — Oakland and San Francisco are next door, we had access to great food just a walk away and the trails around campus were amazing. The professors were excellent.”
For prospective students weighing their MBA options, the takeaway is not to ignore rankings, but to contextualise them. They can serve as an indicator of post-grad opportunity, brand recognition and peer quality. But they are also incomplete.
They don’t account for culture, personal fit, teaching quality, alumni engagement, or the intangible forces that make an experience transformative.
Nor do they capture how volatile — and strategic — rankings themselves have become. As schools tweak admissions, scholarships and career services in pursuit of higher placement, the rankings arms race increasingly reflects institutional tactics as much as student outcomes.
The bottom line? Rankings still matter. They’re shorthand for prestige and they shape both perception and opportunity. But as Krall and Lughmani suggest, what you extract from an MBA — professionally, intellectually, personally — depends far more on what you bring to the table than where your school lands on a list.
Seb Murray is a London-based freelance journalist and editor with several years’ experience in print and online media. He writes regularly for titles such as the Financial Times, the Guardian and the Evening Standard, as well as a plethora of education and corporate magazines and websites. He reports on issues facing the world’s top higher education institutions and online education providers.
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