US News Part-Time MBA Rankings Announced
For prospective students considering part-time programs that allow them to continue working throughout their MBA studies, check out the latest US News Part-Time MBA Rankings. Although UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and Chicago Booth School of Business swapped places in the updated ranking, the rest of the top five part-time programs have remained unchanged for six years running.
US News Part-Time MBA Rankings
| Business School | 2023-24 Ranking | 2022-23 Ranking |
|---|---|---|
| UC Berkeley Haas | 1 | 2 |
| Chicago Booth | 2 | 1 |
| Kellogg School | 3 | 3 |
| NYU Stern | 4 | 4 |
| UCLA Anderson | 5 | 5 |
| UT McCombs | 6 | 8 |
| UM Ross School | 7 | 7 |
| USC Marshall | 8 | 9 |
| CMU Tepper | 9 (tie) | 6 |
| Georgetown McDonough | 9 (tie) | 17 |
Source: US News
Methodology for the US News Part-Time MBA Rankings
The following methodology explains the overall positioning of these ranked part-time programs.
1. Peer assessment score (weighted 50% of the school’s overall score)
The peer assessment score is based on surveys in fall 2022 and early 2023 that asked business school deans and MBA program directors to rate the overall academic quality of the other part-time programs on a scale from marginal (1) to outstanding (5). A school’s score is the average rating of all the responses.
2. Part-time student ratio (12.5% weight, unchanged)
This is the percentage of each business school’s fall 2022 enrollment of part-time students. A higher proportion scores better in the ranking because part-time students may be more likely to receive better services and attention at a school more dedicated to them.
3. Part-time students total (12.5% – new indicator)
A higher total part-time enrollment scores higher in the ranking. This was introduced to counterbalance the part-time student ratio indicator; namely that having a high part-time student ratio is more impressive if achieved at a larger scale versus a reliance on few full-time students.
Each school’s part-time enrollment was first converted to a 1-100 percentile distribution relative to other programs before normalization to account for the skewed nature of the data in which a handful of programs have much larger enrollments than the others.
4. GMAT/GRE scores (10%, previously 15%)
For each part-time MBA program, its fall 2022 new entrants’ median GMAT score and median GRE scores for analytical writing, verbal and quantitative scores were each converted to percentile distributions and weighted by the proportion of test-takers of each exam. For example, a school with three times as many GMAT test-takers as GRE test-takers would have its GMAT scores apply three times as much to the ranking.
US News switched to using median – or 50th percentile – test scores from mean average scores to best measure the typical student and decrease the impact of outliers, including otherwise promising applicants with lower-than-average test scores.
Programs that reported scores on fewer than 25% of their entering class had their score distributions adjusted downward on a sliding scale. For example, if 20% of a school’s entering class submitted GMAT and GRE test scores, its combined weighted percentile distribution scale was multiplied by 20/25 or 0.8.
Several schools that reported scores on fewer than five new entrants – including many that do not use standardized tests in admissions decisions – were assigned values equaling the lowest score received by a school reporting usable data. This was done out of fairness so that schools making use of tests could not score lower on the test indicator than schools not using tests.
5. Undergraduate grade point average (10%, previously 12.5%)
Success as an undergraduate is a strong predictor of success as a graduate student. The average undergraduate GPA of all 2022 new entrants was used for this ranking factor.
Schools that reported GPAs on fewer than 50% of their fall 2022 new entrants had their scores adjusted downward on a sliding scale, similar to what is done with GMAT/GRE scores.
6. Work experience (5%, previously 10%)
This is the average number of months of work experience among fall 2022 new entrants. This admissions factor is included because business schools value enrolling part-time students with backgrounds that can underpin their studies.
See the full list of US News’s ranking of part-time MBA programs here, and while you’re at it, catch up on the 2023-24 full-time MBA program rankings, too.
Curious about your chances of getting into a top B-school? Contact us to talk strategy with a free 15-minute advising session with an SBC Principal Consultant. Stacy Blackman Consulting offers multiple services to meet your MBA application needs, from our All-In Partnership to test prep to hourly help with targeted tasks.
Here’s a snapshot of the caliber of expertise on our SBC team.
