Acceptance Rates At The Top 25 U.S. MBA Programs

Graduate School Business School - MBA
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"Is this the best time to apply to a prestige MBA program? The numbers say yes.

And they say it emphatically. Only three schools among the top 25 in the United States saw their acceptance rates decline in the last year, while the 22 others saw increases — including some dramatic increases at some very elite schools. Poets&Quants examined the available 2018-2019 data from the leading schools and found that 12 have acceptance rates in the 20s or lower; last year that group numbered 15. The elite of the elite remain so, of course, with miserly admit numbers relative to the number of applicants, including Stanford Graduate School of Business, hardest of all to get into at just 6.7%. Stanford is followed by MIT Sloan School of Management (11.5%), Harvard Business School (12%), UC-Berkeley Haas School of Business (17.7%), and Columbia Business School (19.1%) to round out the top five." …

https://poetsandquants.com/2019/10/07/acceptance-rates-at-the-top-25-u-s-mba-programs/

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Some generous admission rates to top MBA programs:

5 Northwestern--Kellogg 25% admit rate

9 Dartmouth--Tuck 34.5%

12 Virginia-Darden 36.3%

18 Univ. of Texas at Austin 38%

20 Emory 44%

23 Georgetown 60.5%

25 Indiana--Kelley 49.4%

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The above MBA acceptance rates appear a little high for some of more elite schools such as Northwestern and Dartmouth.

I did some checking. Per the US News & World Report’s Graduate School Rankings, the Graduate Business Schools’ MBA acceptances % for 2011, 2016 and 2018 for the following schools were:

                                              2018                          2016                            2011

Northwestern 21.9% 20.1% 21.1%

Dartmouth 23.3 22.4 17.9

Virginia 32.9 26.5 24.6

Univ. of Texas 33.6 28.0 25.3

Emory 40.8 33.1 35.1

Georgetown 55.2 44.6 49.1

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@UCBUSCalum : I think that you missed the point of the P&Q article noted in the original post in this thread. Your numbers are old; my numbers are correct.

Rising admit rates due to two main factors: A healthy economy & soaring COA.

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As well as proliferation of one year programs, and availability of online one and two year programs from highly reputable schools.

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2019 admit rates at the top 25 MBA programs:

  1. Harvard–12%

  2. Penn-Wharton–22%

  3. Stanford–6.7%

  4. Chicago-Booth–22.5%

  5. Northwestern-Kellogg–26%

  6. MIT–11.5%

  7. Columbia–19.1%

  8. UCal-Berkeley–17.7%

  9. Dartmouth-Tuck–34.5%

  10. Michigan-Ross–31%

  11. Yale SOM–25.2%

  12. Virginia–Darden–36.3%

  13. Cornell–38.3%

  14. Duke-Fuqua–22.9%

  15. UCLA–26%

  16. NYU-Stern–26.1%

  17. CMU-Tepper–41.5%

  18. Texas-Austin–38%

  19. UNC-Keenan-Flagler–52.9%

  20. Emory–44%

  21. Univ. of Washington–Foster–36%

  22. USC–29.9%

  23. Georgetown–60.5%

  24. Rice-Jones–37.3%

  25. Indiana-Kelley–49.4%

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Top 25 MBA Programs by 2019 Yield:

  1. Harvard–89%

  2. Stanford–84.2%

  3. MIT–69.5%

  4. Columbia–67.2%

  5. Penn-Wharton–66%

  6. Chicago-Booth–59.5%

  7. Duke-Fuqua–56.8%

  8. UCLA–49.2%

  9. Northwestern-Kellogg–48%

  10. Cornell–48%

  11. UCal-Berkeley (Haas)–46.3%

  12. Rice–45.9%

  13. Michigan-Ross–45.6%

  14. Yale SOM–42.8%

  15. Virginia-Darden–42.5%

  16. Dartmouth-Tuck–40.5%

  17. NYU-Stern–39.1%

  18. Univ. of Wash–Foster–38.9%

  19. USC–37.7%

  20. Indiana-Kelley–37.4%

  21. CMU-Tepper–36.8%

  22. UNC-Keenan-Flagler–36%

  23. Texas–35.1%

  24. Georgetown–33.5%

  25. Emory–32.7%

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@Publisher : Sorry, I did not know the 2019 acceptance rates were out. I do understand that with the strong economy and plenty of jobs we currently have, there would be less applicants to top MBA schools and therefore acceptance rates would go up.

I was a little surprised to see that the 2 elite MBA programs, Northwestern and Dartmouth, had higher acceptance rates in 2019 than their historically acceptance rates.

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In our circle of friends, the folks who have gone back to school for their MBAs all were done part time, mostly on-line, and paid for by their employers. I wonder if some of that is impacting the numbers at the top schools?

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Another major factor cited by a recent WSJ article https://www.wsj.com/articles/elite-m-b-a-programs-report-steep-drop-in-applications-11571130001 is the decline in international applicants.

"Applications to some of America’s most elite business schools fell at a steeper rate this year, as universities struggled to attract international students amid changes to immigration policies and political tensions between the U.S. and China.

The declines affected some of the nation’s top-rated programs, with Harvard University, Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among others, all reporting larger year-over-year drops in business-school applications. Some, such as Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, posted double-digit percentage declines…

But education experts say shifts in U.S. immigration policy, trade and political tensions with China, as well as the growing attractiveness of technology-industry jobs that don’t require M.B.A. degrees, have recently dampened foreign students’ enthusiasm for business school.

Meanwhile, a hot domestic job market has cooled the interest of many Americans in the traditional two-year M.B.A. path. Millennials, many of whom are saddled with debt loads from their undergraduate degrees, have proved more reluctant than previous generations to pursue the pricey degree."