Critics argue that the MBA is on its last legs, but demand at the top MBA schools is continuously growing. Ready4, a Boston-based company that creates test prep apps, recently released its annual ranking of the “The Most Desired 
Business School Programs.”
Among the 25 schools ranked, Harvard secured the number one spot with Stanford following in second. Four new schools made this year’s rankings, including the London School of Economics (17th place), Cornell (19th place), University of Michigan (24th place), and Dartmouth (25th place). At the same time, Boston College, Carnegie Mellon, Imperial College, and USC fell off the list.
| Rank and School | Avg. GMAT | % of Ready 4 Users Indicate as a Top Choice |
|---|---|---|
| Harvard | 725 | 8.00% |
| Stanford | 732 | 6.00% |
| University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) | 730 | 4.00% |
| MIT (Sloan) | 716 | 4.00% |
| Indian School of Business | 704 | 3.30% |
| Columbia | 718 | 3.20% |
| London Business School | 715 | 3.00% |
| New York University (Stern) | 710 | 2.60% |
| INSEAD | 703 | 2.50% |
| University of California Berkeley (Haas) | 717 | 2.40% |
| University of Chicago (Booth) | 726 | NA |
| Northwestern (Kellogg) | 728 | NA |
| Indian Institute of Management | Varies | NA |
| Yale | 730 | NA |
| Duke (Fuqua) | 696 | NA |
| University of Oxford | 690 | NA |
| London School of Economics | 700 | NA |
| HEC Paris | 690 | NA |
| Cornell | 700 | NA |
| University of Cambridge | 690 | NA |
| National University of Singapore | 656 | NA |
| UCLA | 715 | NA |
| SP Jain Institute of Management | 650 | NA |
| University of Michigan Ann Arbor (Ross) | 708 | NA |
| Dartmouth (Tuck) | 717 | NA |
The Methodology: Ready4’s rankings are based on methodology that’s reported by current and prospective students. In other words, students themselves are ranking which schools they find most desirable.
Registered Ready4 users from 195 countries register to download the platform’s GMAT prep mobile application. In the process, they are required to select 10 schools they are interested in applying to. The data was based off 250,000 site visitors since November 2015, with men comprising 62% of the sample. Among its rankings, Ready4 also displays the average GMAT score, acceptance rate, and percentage of students who indicate the school as a top choice.
Top B-Schools Are Getting More Applicants
What does this ranking say? For one, it appears that student demand for the top b-schools hasn’t changed. According to a Fortune report, top b-schools are seeing an increase in applicants. “Yale University’s School of Management has seen a whopping 45% increase in
applications since 2013. Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Business has seen a 28% increase, and University of California-Berkeley’s Haas has seen a 20.7% uptick.”
Along those lines, t is a reflection of which programs are generating the most interest before applications are submitted. According to Ready4, the respondents possessed 4 years and 7 months of work experience, with 65% of them looking to start business school within the next year. As a result, the survey is a measurement of school interest from the Class of 2020 and 2021.
Not surprisingly, the big three – Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton – continued to garner the most interest. For the most part, the top schools cited by Ready4 users were larger programs (300+ student annual intake) and urban. The majority were American – though by a slimmer 15-to-10 margin than might be expected. That said, several international schools, including the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Oxford, and the National University of Singapore experienced the biggest drops in interest. Source: Business Wire, Fortune
