HBS First in Rankings

Harvard Business School (HBS) earned a first-place ranking last month in the Financial Times’ annual evaluation of MBA programs around the globe. HBS tied for first with the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, which has perennially held the top spot alone.

The rankings were based on 20 criteria, with particular weight on graduates’ salaries three years after completing an MBA program.

Twenty percent of the Times’ assessment of each school stood in the “weighted salary” of its graduates—that is, the average salary of MBA-holders three years after graduation, with adjustments for variations between industry sectors. The salary increase from entrance into business school to three years after graduation accounted for another 20 percent of each school’s rating.

HBS graduates averaged a weighted salary of $155,107 per year—a 140 percent increase from their salaries upon entering HBS. Wharton graduates earned an average weighted salary of $143,966, an increase of 152 percent upon entering Wharton.

The study also gave weight to faculty publications and the international employment mobility of alumni.

A small part of the Times’ computations included each school’s percentage of female faculty. With 22 percent, HBS had the highest proportion among the top-ranked institutions, although it stood just below average among all the schools in the ratings.

HBS spokesman David R. Lampe downplayed the importance of the Times’ assessments of MBA programs.

“These rankings are not really meaningful measures of the differences between the schools,” he said. “It’s inevitable that sometimes Harvard will be ranked as number one, two, three, or whatever else.”

Lampe noted that the Times’ rankings do not account for some of HBS’s strongest assets.

“We have the best yield not only of any business school...but also of almost any educational institution,” he said. The school’s yield regularly tops 86 percent.

Sandford Kreisberg, founder of Cambridge Essay Service, an admissions consulting firm for applicants to elite business schools, said that the Times’ rankings do not influence where students choose to apply.

“From an elite student’s point of view, the only rating that counts is how hard schools are perceived to get in to,” Kreisberg said. “That is taken by employers as a proxy for general intelligence.”

—Staff writer Daniel J. T. Schuker can be reached at dschuker@fas.harvard.edu.