American business magazine Forbes has released its 11th biennial ranking of the best business schools around the globe for the 1-year full-time MBA program.

The Top Ten One Year MBA Programs

While IMD and INSEAD retained the first and second places respectively that they earned in 2017, Indian Business School (ISB) has made it to the Top Ten at rank 7. Another newcomer ESMT Berlin is ranked 10^th in the 17 School list.

University of Cambridge Judge Business School has climbed one spot to Rank 3 along with SDA Bocconi at 4^th rank and Forbes had released the 10^th biennial ranking of B-schools in 2017.

On the second spot is INSEAD followed by IE Business School in the third place and Cambridge Judge Business School in the 4th position. Said Business School at the University of Oxford also moved up one spot to rank 5.

IE Business School, however, slipped from the 2^nd rank to 6^th position. Warwick Business School climbed six spots from 16^th to 8^th rank knocking down Mannheim Business School to 9^th rank.

Other One Year MBA Programs

At Rank 11 was Imperial College Business School that climbed two places from the previous rankings followed by SP Jain Global that climbed three slots to 12. However, HKU and Rotterdam Erasmus dropped five spots to rank 13 and 14 respectively. Cass Business School too dropped three spots to the 15^th rank. HEC Montreal climbed one spot to 16^th rank but Hult International Business School dropped two spots to the 17^th rank.

The Top Three’s Performance

The alumni of IMD, located at Lausanne, Switzerland, reported a 5-year MBA gain of $168.9 K, took 2.7 years to payback. The pre-MBA salary was $82 K and 2018 salary $200 K. The tuition cost was $85 K. The cohort’s GMAT score was 680.

INSEAD, with campuses in Fontainebleau (France) and Singapore, reported a 5-year gain of $154.7 K, 2.6 years to pay back, a pre-MBA salary of $195 K and GMAT score of 710.

Cambridge Judge reported a 5-year gain of $153 K, 2.4 years to pay back, the pre-MBA salary of $67 K, 2018 salary at $183 K, Tuition $65 K and GMAT score of 700.

Ranking Methodology

Forbes says the ranking is based on one question, whether the full-time MBA is worth it when set against the costs involved. The tuition, fees and forgone compensation (in terms of salary and other earnings for the program duration) could be as high as $350,000 at the top schools.

Given that most people enrol for an MBA program for a career change and/or greater financial rewards, the ranking is based solely on the median returns on investment achieved by the graduates from the class of 2014.

It also cautions that returns for individuals could vary wildly and graduates from business schools outside the top tier could end up with weak returns.

For this edition of the rankings, Forbes considered more than 100 schools and surveyed 17,500 alumni regarding their pre- and post-M.B.A. compensation, career choice and location. Graduates from the best one-year international programs produced an average “5-year MBA gain” of $91,300. This is considerably more than that from international two-year business schools who reported an average 5-year gain of $62,300.

Graduates of one-year international programs earned back their investment (tuition and two years of lost salary) in 3.1 years on average, while those from two-year international programs earned back theirs in 3.8 years.

It said 25% of the graduates had sent in replies. “We excluded schools from the rankings when we did not hear back from at least 15% of their alumni. We also did not include schools for which alumni had a negative ROI after five years,” the publication said.

A comparison was made between alumni earnings in their first five years out of business school and their opportunity cost (two years of forgone compensation, tuition and required fees).

The total compensation, including salary, bonuses and exercised stock options are taken into consideration. It is assumed that the compensation would have risen half as fast as their post-MBA salary increases had they not attended business school.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2019/09/18/the-best-business-schools-2019-behind-the-numbers/#1b47530c3089

https://www.forbes.com/business-schools/list/international-1-year/#tab:rank