The Best Business Schools for Career and Personal Growth

Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

Business school is a place to hide out. After getting beaten down in the real world, MBA students – like hippies before them – are just looking to “find themselves.” Back on campus, they can ride out their quarter life crisis. Coddled and insulated, they indulge in bull sessions and beer pong with fellow lost souls. For two years, they won’t fret over the maze or ladder (or whatever metaphor is assigned to work these days). In the end, an MBA is a bittersweet goodbye to all things frivolous…before responsibility and mortality turn these students into their parents.

Sound about right? Maybe…if this was the 1980s!

These days, business school is no place for confused cads or perpetual partiers. For starters, adcoms have grown skilled at weeding out these frauds. At $20K-$60K a year, b-school would be an awfully expensive re-run of early adulthood (even if schools hold proms sometimes). And employers are expecting more from MBAs than ever before. Forget retreat: Employers seek candidates who are charging forward, open and engaged, full of purpose and plans.

And that’s exactly what makes MBAs so attractive. They arrive on campus with a vision for themselves. And they relentlessly pursue those ends for two years. They study the top companies and travel the globe to learn the best practices. More important, they collaborate (and compete) with the best business minds – their classmates. And this forces them to raise their performance every day. By graduation, they’ve learned to manage themselves. And that’s prepared them to manage others.

How The Financial Times Measures Personal and Career Growth

But not all schools are created equal when it comes to grooming students for the next stage of their careers. And that’s why The Financial Times’ 2014 survey results for Aims Achieved and Career Progress are so critical. It shows which schools live up to their promises to students – and prepare them to take on more responsibility once they graduate.

According to The Financial Times’ methodology, “Aims Achieved” reflects “the extent to which alumni fulfilled their stated goals or reasons for doing an MBA.” Similarly, “Career Progress” is based on “changes in the level of seniority and the size of company alumni are working in now, versus before their MBA.”

For both surveys, the results are derived from 10,986 respondents from 153 schools, a 47% response rate. To be ranked, a school must have 20% of their target alumni fill out at least 20 complete surveys. The ranking includes two years of data, with a 60:40 weight given for 2014/2013 data and a 70:30 weight for 2014/2012 surveys. The data was collected in September and October of 2013. The aims and career categories each comprise 3% of a school’s overall ranking.

How truthful are students when asked to fill out a survey that they know will impact their school’s ranking? It’s hard to say. It’s tempting, however, to note that the surprising strength of the British schools in the survey could be attributed to the importance of the FT in the British market. U.K. MBAs may be less willing to diss their alma maters because they are well aware of the newspaper’s influence. U.S. MBAs may not attach as much importance to the survey or the FT. Generally, in student surveys, the few with an axe to grind cancel out the cheerleaders. But bias is clearly a factor worth considering when you look at the results of these FT surveys.

Stanford’s Graduate School of Business

Stanford Tops List for Career Growth

The Stanford Graduate School of Business replaced the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad) as the top school for career growth in 2014. While Stanford alums only ranked #100 for increase in salary (and #99 for value for the money), they scored the highest salaries – $184,566 – within three years of graduation. The school also earned the #2 spot in The Financial Times’ alumni satisfaction survey.

Two Indian Institutes of Management – Ahmedabad and Bangalore – surprisingly ranked #2 and #3 respectively. Both also scored in the top 21 for alumni satisfaction, And Ahmedabad graduates earned the highest salaries after three years ($157,459) among international business schools. The Harvard Business School and Spain’s IESE Business School rounded out the top five (with Harvard ranking #1 in alumni satisfaction).

Overall, schools in the United Kingdom dominated the list for career growth, placing eight schools in the top 25 (led by the Cass Business School at #6). The United States featured seven schools among the top 25, including MIT (Sloan), Babson College (Olin), Yale, Northwestern (Kellogg), and the University of California-San Diego (Rady).

University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler School of Business

American Schools Dominate the Bottom 25…and the Biggest Gainers

The United States earned the dubious distinction of landing 17 schools in the bottom 25 for Career Progress. Surprisingly, the University of Wisconsin held the #100 spot for the second consecutive year, despite ranking #26 in Aims Achieved and returning a 104% increase in salary within three years of graduation. Other schools that fared poorly here include the University of California-Irvine (Merage), Washington University (Olin), the University of Toronto (Rotman), and Melbourne Business School.

Other schools that ranked much lower than expected in career growth include the University of Chicago (Booth) at #46, Duke University (Fuqua) at #63, and Indiana University (Kelley) at #92.

However, American schools dominated the list when it comes to the biggest improvements in Career Progress. For example, the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School jumped 36 spots, from #88 to #52 over the past year. Similarly, Boston University, Dartmouth College (Tuck), and the University of Michigan (Ross) rose 31, 30, and 24 spots over 2013. In particular, Tuck and Booth were buoyed by high wages after three years ($150,754 for Tuck and $136,828 for Ross).

The Australian School of Management experienced the biggest slide in Career Progress, plummeting from #27 to #79 in one year. The Melbourne Business School (Australia), the Cranfield School of Management (UK), and the Mannheim Business School slipped 35, 32, and 30 spots respectively (with Cranfield sliding all the way down from #11 in career progress in 2013). Among American schools, Arizona State University (Carey) fell 25 spots, while Georgia Washington University and Georgia Tech University (Scheller) each dropped 23 spots.

IMD is ranked third among the top 50 business schools outside the U.S. by Poets&Quants.

Students Achieve Their Goals at IMD and Stanford

When it comes to students fulfilling their business school missions, Switzerland’s IMD tops the list, replacing the London School of Business, which tumbled to #3 in 2014. In fact, IMD is among the few schools with high marks across the board, ranking #7 in career progress, #3 in value, and #16 among alumni (and that doesn’t factor in its lofty $142,446 average paycheck for alumni after three years). Like IMD, Stanford scores high in every category, including the #2 spot in aims achieved (up from #5 last year).  Spain’s IESE Business School and the Yale School of Management round out the top five.

Two Chinese schools – the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (Antai) and the Fudan University School of Management sunk to the bottom of Aims Achieved in The Financial Times’ ranking. Among American schools, Penn State University (Smeal) scored the lowest at #96.

The biggest gains over the previous year in Aims Achieved? The honor belongs to the University of Michigan (Ross), which soared from #63 in 2013 to #15 this year. Other big gains were posted by the University of Oxford (Saïd) (+35), Georgetown University (McDonough) (+30), Melbourne Business School (+30), and Emory University (Goizueta) (+27).

A student in a class at the Indian School of Business

Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad)

Discrepancies Between Career Progress and Aims Achieved Rankings

Surprisingly, the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad), which ranked #3 in Career Progress, came in at #96 in Aims Achieved. In other words, despite rising in seniority and company size, alumni respondents didn’t feel they achieved what they sought out to do in school. And this school isn’t alone. The Indian Institute of Management (Bangalore) ranked #2 in Career Progress and #84 in Aims Achieved. In fact, both schools showed a similar discrepancy in 2013. South Africa’s University of Cape Town (#13 in career progress and #92 in aims achieved) and the UK’s University of Bath School of Management (#17 in Career Progress and #95 in Aims Achieved) also followed this pattern.

While these are extreme examples, most schools had a 10-30 spot rank discrepancy between Career Progress and Aims Achieved. Take Harvard Business School, for example. It ranked #4 with the career metrics, yet fell to #50 in the aims survey with alumni. Conversely, the University of Chicago (Booth) scored much higher on Aims Achieved as opposed to Career Progress, ranking #16 on the former and #46 on the latter.

IESE Business School

Stanford Tops Combined Average

In reality, Career Progress and Aims Achieved are similar metrics. The former applies student-supplied data to rank their career development (with size of company likely discriminating against entrepreneurs and seniority not necessarily mirroring influence). Similarly, attaining school goals (i.e. Aims Achieved) doesn’t necessarily translate to career success. To balance out these two interests, Poets & Quants averaged the two rankings.

Not surprisingly, Stanford again came out on top, with an average rank of 1.5 when Career Progress and Aims Achieved are combined. Switzerland’s IMD edged out Spain’s IESE Business School, with the schools’ average rans at 4.0 and 4.5 respectively. The London Business School (7.5), Esade Business School (8.0) and the University of Cambridge (Judge) (8.5) all maintained combined ranks under 10 (with the Yale Business School coming in just behind that with a 12.5 average).

To view the top 100 schools, continue to the next pages.

Don’t Miss: World’s Best Career Management Centers

Source: The Financial Times

To see schools ranked 26-50, click on the next page. 

Source: The Financial Times

To see schools ranked 51-75, click on the next page. 

Source: The Financial Times

Source: The Financial Times