The achievement in the composite ranking firmly cements INSEAD’s position as the world’s leading international business school
INSEAD, the business school for the world, today announced that it has been ranked first in Poets&Quants’ (P&Q) 2017 international MBA ranking for the third consecutive year. The P&Q ranking is a composite of the four major and most credible MBA rankings published by the Financial Times, The Economist, Bloomberg Businessweek and Forbes.
This achievement firmly cements INSEAD’s position as the world’s premier international business school with its consistent and exceptional performance in major rankings. It highlights the school’s strong reputation, the academic excellence of its MBA programme, the success of its alumni and the extraordinary return of investment (ROI) in its innovative 10-month programme. INSEAD is also recognised for offering the quintessential international business education and experience in a truly diverse classroom setting where there is no dominant culture across its three global campuses.
Poets&Quants’ 2017 International MBA Ranking (Top 10)
| 2017 Rank | School Name | 2016 Rank | Index | Financial Times | The Economist | Bloomberg Businessweek | Forbes |
| #1 | INSEAD | 1 | 100.0 | 1 (1) | 4 (4) | 1 (2) | 2 (1) |
| #2 | IESE Business School | 3 | 98.6 | 5 (8) | 3 (1) | 3 (5) | 2 (2) |
| #3 | London Business School | 2 | 98.5 | 3 (2) | 9 (9) | 2 (1) | 1 (1) |
| #4 | IE Business School | 4 | 96.2 | 4 (4) | 10 (5) | 8 (6) | 3 (5) |
| #5 | IMD | 4 | 96.0 | 10 (5) | 8 (7) | 5 (7) | 1 (2) |
| #6 | HEC Paris | 6 | 95.8 | 9 (7) | 1 (1) | 10 (11) | 4 (3) |
| #7 | Cambridge (Judge) | 7 | 95.5 | 2 (3) | 17 (24) | 6 (4) | 4 (3) |
| #8 | SDA Bocconi | 8 | 94.2 | 11 (12) | 7 (13) | 7 (8) | 5 (4) |
| #9 | ESADE | 9 | 93.3 | 8 (10) | 14 (19) | 9 (12) | 5 (10) |
| #10 | Oxford (Saïd) | 10 | 88.4 | 18 (14) | 27 (36) | 4 (3) | 6 (7) |
Source: Poets&Quants composite ranking
This year, 70 different business schools made one or more of the four lists, but only 16 of the schools were recognised by all four rankings.
INSEAD’s strong performance in P&Q’s latest ranking is a result of its stellar performance in these rankings in 2017:
- Financial Times: Being ranked the number one MBA programme in the world for two consecutive years in 2016 and 2017 with its outstanding scores in several of the FT ranking categories, including alumni career progress, international diversity and idea generation.
- Bloomberg Businessweek: Moved up one notch to rank first in its ‘Best International Business Schools 2017’ rankings with the school’s exceptional performance in surveys of recruiters, alumni, and students, as well as its recent graduates’ success at landing jobs and securing high starting wages.
- Forbes: Recognised as having the second highest return on investment out of any MBA programme in the world where alumni of INSEAD's class of 2012 realised a 5-year gain of US$150K, nearly double that of top two-year programmes.
- The Economist: Another top performance, with the INSEAD MBA programme ranked in fourth position among European Business schools.
Aside from the above, the INSEAD MBA programme has also been recently ranked first in Asia and Europe, and second globally in the inaugural QS Global MBA Rankings 2018.
Methodology
The P&Q ranking takes into account a wealth of quantitative and qualitative data captured in the four global rankings, from surveys of corporate recruiters, MBA graduates, deans and faculty publication records to median GPA and GMAT scores of entering students as well as the latest salary and employment statistics of alumni.
P&Q blends the four major rankings using a system accounting for each of their strengths and flaws and which minimises anomalies and other statistical distortions. The ranking also weighs them according to the reliability of their methodologies. Financial Times and Forbes are both weighted at 30 percent each, while Bloomberg Businessweek and The Economist rankings are given a 20 percent weightage. A composite list lends greater stability to school rankings that rarely change from year to year. P&Q ranks U.S. schools separately.
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