What are the best business schools in the USA? | US News MBA Ranking 2026

TL;DR

● The US News MBA ranking is a prestigious list of the best business schools in the US
● In 2026, Stanford takes the top spot with Wharton, Booth, Harvard, and Kellogg rounding off the top five
● The rest of the 2026 US News ranking was marked by large swings, with several universities seeing double-digit changes to their position

Stanford Graduate School of Management is the best business school in the US according to the latest US News & World Report ranking. The Californian school rose one place in 2026 to reclaim the top spot from The Wharton School, which fell to second place.

University of Chicago Booth School of Business—a fellow member of the elite group of M7 Business Schools—rose one place to third, Harvard Business School rose by two places to finish fourth, while Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management dropped two positions to rank joint-fourth with Harvard.

The remainder of the top 10 business schools in the US News ranking comprises MIT Sloan School of Management, Columbia Business School, NYU Stern School of Business, Dartmouth Tuck School of Business, and UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.

US News & World Report ranks the best business schools in the US each year based on metrics including graduate salaries and bonuses, employment rates, GMAT scores and GPAs, and MBA acceptance rates.

Stanford: Absent from Financial Times ranking, top of US News

Stanford’s position as the best business school in the highly competitive US market is significant given that it hasn’t featured at all in the Financial Times Global MBA Ranking for the past two years. After failing to meet the required alumni response threshold in 2025, the school opted not to participate in 2026.

Stanford’s success in the US News ranking can be put down to its impressive performance across several key areas. It has the highest average undergraduate GPA, GMAT score, peer assessment score, and starting salary of any school in the list. Stanford graduates earn an average salary (including bonuses) of $206,174. 

Moreover, the school ranks highly across almost every metric measured by US News, including employment rate and recruiter assessment score. It also has the lowest acceptance rate (6.8%) in the ranking by a significant margin, being the only school that accepts fewer than 10% of applicants. 

Best business schools in the US: M7 business schools dominate the top 10

The top seven schools that make up the best business schools in the US are all members of the highly prestigious M7, which are widely regarded as being among the best business schools in the world. 
Though these schools tend to perform well in the ranking, it’s the first time since 2022 that the M7 have occupied all of the top seven positions. At joint seventh, NYU Stern is the top-ranked non-M7 school in the list. Its performance can be partly attributed to the strong average salaries of its graduates. It was one of only four schools in the list (along with Wharton, Booth, and Stanford) to see graduates earn starting salaries and bonuses averaging above $200,000.

US News top 10 MBA programs in the US

Looking deeper into the schools that followed close behind Stanford, Wharton leads the way in second place. Graduates from Wharton earn an average salary and bonus of $201,902, with 87.6% employed within three months of graduation. The school has a median undergraduate GPA of 3.7 and an acceptance rate of 18.6%.

Third-placed Booth reported an average graduate salary and bonus of $200,968, with an acceptance rate of 27.3% and three-month employment rate of 86%. 
Harvard finished fourth in the overall ranking, but had the second-lowest acceptance rate and joint-best peer assessment score.

Kellogg and Sloan both reported average graduate salaries of just under $200k, though Kellogg’s three-month employment rate of 86.4% was noticeably higher than Sloan’s (81.8%).

Further down the top 10, Stern graduates had the highest average GMAT scores while Columbia had the strongest three-month employment rate (88.4%) of any school in the top 10.

At 28.3%, Tuck had the highest acceptance rate in the top 10. Haas was notable for having the lowest tuition fees ($76,800) of the leading schools.

Top-ranked US MBA programs: Gains and losses

There are rarely seismic shifts at the top end of the US News MBA Ranking—University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business dropped three places to ninth, making it the biggest mover in the top 10. However, some lower-ranked schools made significant gains this year.

They include the University of Kansas (up 21 places to 51st), University of South Carolina (up 18 places to joint-53rd), Chapman University (up 13 places to joint-53rd), and American University’s Kogod School of Business (up 12 places to 46th). Kogod has now risen 39 places over the past two years. 

In contrast, Texas Christian University, Northeastern University, Baylor University, and University of California–Riverside all fell by more than 10 places in the ranking.  

Best business schools for business analytics, finance and more

The US News MBA ranking also ranks business schools across several specialisms in its Specialty Rankings, although these do not contribute to the overall ranking.

According to US News, the best business schools in the US for business analytics are: MIT Sloan, Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business, and Columbia. 

The top US business schools for finance are Stanford, Wharton, Harvard, Sloan, and Booth. 

Meanwhile, the best schools for accounting are Columbia, Stanford, Stern, Marshall, and Wharton. 

In terms of general management, Wharton led the way followed by Harvard, Columbia, Sloan, Kellogg, and Stanford.