Financial Times has posted the annual MBA ranking. Being the most international ranking there is, I used this ranking a lot when deciding which program to attend.
http://rankings.ft.com/global-mba-rankings
Global Perspective
Top 10 USA schools according to this ranking (place last year in the brackets)
1. Wharton (1)
2. Columbia (4) – surprised here?
3. Stanford (3)
3. Harvard (2)
6. Chicago GSB (6)
8. NYU Stern (7)
9. Tuck (8)
10. Yale (11)
14. MIT Sloan (10)
17. UCLA Anderson (19)
Top 10 European Schools
5. LBS, UK (5)
7. INSEAD, France/Singapore (8)
11. IE Business School, Spain (-)
13. IMD, Switzerland (14)
15. Cambridge Judge, UK (35)
16. IESE, Spain (13)
18. HEC Paris, France (22)
19. Oxford Said, UK (20)
22. Manchester Business School, UK (22)
24. Esade, Spain
An up trend for European school. Also important is Ceibs from China #11 this year.
Personal Perspective
INSEAD is ranked 7th in the world, up from #8 last year. MIT Sloan – the other business school I was admitted to is down – #14 this year, a fall from #10 last year. Did I do the right decision here? It seems so.
My third business school was Oxford – up 1 place in #19 in the world. Cambridge (the strong competition) is #15.
I was on the waitlist of London Business School, still at #5 and the best European school according to this ranking. But it is not that clear that it is a better choice than INSEAD as I will show next.
INSEAD – A Further Look
Ok, so INSEAD is up to #7. What other things can we tell from this ranking?
Employment
Weighted Salary for INSEAD students is 140K$. 2nd in Europe – IMD is first with 153K$. LBS only third with 135K$. Oxford is not legging behind with 128K$.
Top salaries are for graduates from Stanford (168K$), Cape Town (What? 163K$), Wharton (160K$), and HBS (157K$).
Salary Increase – For LBS it’s 122%, INSEAD only 94% (poor us).
You wanna get an increase? Go to Ceibs (159%), Yale (151%), or IE (149%).
Will you get a job after the MBA? According to FT you have a chance of 90% if you graduate from INSEAD – pretty low comparing to all the others. LBS is 96%.
School
INSEAD is the #6 international school. LBS is only 10. The other top 10 schools are no where to be seen. Do you want an international perspective? Come to INSEAD.
Value for money – INSEAD is the 2nd school among the Top 20 schools, only IMD is above. Oxford not too far behind. LBS is one of the most expensive schools and the worst in the world in that category. Being a one year program pays off.
Reputation – Alumni were asked to rate the schools based on whether they will recruit MBAs from that school. LBS is #5 and INSEAD #6. This is a pretty important category so here is the top 10:
1. Wharton
2. HBS
3. Stanford
4. Kellogg
5. LBS
6. INSEAD
7. Chicago GSB
8. Columbia
9. MIT Sloan
10. Ross
Next 10: NYU, Tuck, Duke, Darden, UCLA, Berkeley, IMD, Toronto, Iese, Kenan-Flagler.
Is this the true ranking? From inspecting the results it might as well be. The American schools are sorted pretty much as I would expect, and also the European schools. Less surprising than the real FT ranking.
Summary
It seems that INSEAD is a top 10 school again this year in all categories, an excellent value for money, with great employment future and an international exposure.
Last, I did my own ranking based on the criteria I find most important (I know that’s weird but it made sense to me): Alumni recommendation-reputation (30%), salary(30%), chance of employment(10%), international(10%) and value(20%).
Here are the results:
1. INSEAD
2. IMD
3. MIT Sloan
4. Wharton
5. Kellogg
6. LBS
7. Cranfield (Uk)
8. HBS
9. Stanford
10. Tuck
11. Oxford
12. UCLA
13. Capetown (South Africa)
14. Chicago GSB
15. Ceibs (China)
16. Columbia
17. IE (Spain)
18. Erasmus (Netherland)
19. Iese
20. North Carolina
Told you that INSEAD is number 1 
.
(I swear that I did not arrange it so INSEAD would be #1. I just picked the most important criteria and put it in Excel. Amazingly INSEAD is the best pick.)
