The world of MBA rankings is changing with Unimy’s 360° MBA Ranking becoming a valuable new tool in the process of business school selection. This innovative platform enables prospective students to make informed decisions about their education, considering both professional and personal aspects.

Undoubtedly, global MBA rankings will remain relevant, especially for employers in specific industries. However, what matters most to MBA participants is what their personal experience during their studies will be like. Recognising this shift, Unimy has developed a ranking system that prioritises individual candidate preferences.

Rethinking the approach to MBA rankings

It started in 2018 when Unimy developed a unique online set of resources for business school selection. The global MBA matching and connection platform was established by Advent Group – a company with 20-year expertise in matching and connecting more than 600,000 MBA candidates to business schools worldwide. Unimy’s ranking was a natural next step in the journey of making education personal.

One of the features that makes the 360° MBA Ranking different is partially based on Unimy’s proprietary School Culture Fit test and index. “School culture is like company culture – it is unique. You spend one or two years in a business school, and then you are the school’s ambassador for life,” highlights Christophe Coutat, Founder and CEO of Advent Group. “So, the school’s culture has to resonate with your values, style and ethics. We incorporated the Culture Fit into our ranking to enable candidates to identify schools not only on ROI and other existing rankings data, but also on cultural match.”

How does it work?

The platform quickly generates a personalised top-100 MBA ranking based on six key performance indicators. Users can choose which factors to prioritise, including:

  • Acceptance rate
  • Career outcomes
  • Culture fit
  • Diversity
  • Faculty

The ranking combines data from established sources like the Financial Times and US News along with Unimy’s school culture data, derived from organisational psychology research and surveys of business school faculties and alumni.

Rankings customised by MBA candidates

Unimy’s novel approach allows professionals to tweak their ranking in a way that makes sense for them, creating highly individual results. By August 2024, prospective business school applicants from 97 countries and 30 industries, including 39% in management or C-level positions, had generated their personal rankings. Notably, cultural fit emerged as the second most important factor after career outcomes, with 60% of candidates adding it to their criteria.

“We compile, aggregate and analyse all the personalised ranking results over the year. This enables us to publish a global Unimy MBA ranking, based on candidate preferences, and not only a personal ranking for each user,” reveals Christophe Coutat.

2024 Global Rankings overview

Released in September 2024, the first edition of the Global Unimy 360° MBA Ranking features the top 100 institutions from 17 countries across four continents. The top study destinations are:

  • Spain
  • USA
  • UK
  • PR China
  • France

The top 25 schools in the 2024 Global Unimy 360° MBA Ranking are:

  • IESE Business School, Spain
  • Cornell University: Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, USA
  • London Business School, UK
  • University of Pennsylvania: The Wharton School, USA
  • CEIBS, China
  • Duke University: Fuqua School of Business, USA
  • Northwestern University: The Kellogg School of Management, USA
  • MIT: Sloan School of Management, USA
  • ESCP Business School, France
  • Yale University: School of Management, USA
  • Dartmouth College: Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, USA
  • Columbia University: Columbia Business School, USA
  • University of Cambridge: Judge Business School, UK
  • HEC Paris, France
  • Stanford University: Stanford Graduate School of Business, USA
  • Harvard Business School (HBS), USA
  • University of California Berkeley: Haas School of Business, USA
  • University of Virginia: Darden School of Business, USA
  • New York University: Stern School of Business, USA
  • The University of Chicago: Booth School of Business, USA
  • Imperial College Business School, UK
  • INSEAD, France
  • IMD Business School, Switzerland
  • Georgetown University: McDonough School of Business, USA
  • SDA Bocconi: School of Management, Italy

What comes next?

This new ranking system represents a significant shift in how MBA programmes are evaluated, as it places emphasis specifically on candidate perspectives. It provides schools with valuable insights into candidate priorities while offering data about institutional character and environment. Unimy plans to expand its rankings in 2025 to include categorised lists based on geography, demographics, and professional backgrounds, further enhancing its value to prospective students and institutions alike.

Generate your personalised MBA ranking at www.unimy.com/ranking