Chicago Booth Returns To The Top Of U.S. News’ Part-Time MBA Ranking

The Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley reclaimed the throne last year as the top part-time MBA program in the United States according to U.S. News & World Report after a four-year stint at No. 2.

Haas’ return to the top was short-lived.

One year after displacing the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business atop the magazine’s annual part-time MBA ranking — taking first place for the first time since 2018 — Berkeley Haas surrendered the crown to Chicago in the new ranking released April 9. The do-si-do gave Booth five No. 1 rankings in the last six years.

U.S. NEWS’ TOP 10 (ACTUALLY 11) PART-TIME MBA PROGRAMS: THROUGH THE YEARS

MARYLAND VAULTS INTO THE TOP 10, RISING 11 PLACES IN ONE YEAR

Maryland Smith Dean Prabhudev Konana: Ranking “reinforces our profile of exceptional students, world-class faculty and innovative curriculum amongst the best and most respected business schools in the country.” Smith photo

“While rankings can fluctuate from year to year and ranking metrics often change, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business believes in and remains committed to our academic experience,” a Chicago Booth spokesperson tells Poets&Quants. “The fundamentals of our multidisciplinary business education, taught by world-class faculty, have long defined the Chicago Booth experience and its thriving global community.”

Even as Booth and Haas swapped places in the new U.S. News ranking, the rest of the top five part-time programs remained the same — exactly as they have for seven years now: Northwestern Kellogg School of Management third, NYU Stern School of Business fourth, and UCLA Anderson School of Management fifth.

The biggest movement in the upper tier of programs belonged to Maryland Smith School of Business, which jumped 11 places from 21st last year, reaching the top 10 for the first time. Maryland’s previous highest placement in the ranking was in 2018, when it was 15th. Also notable were Ohio State Fisher College of Business moving five places into a tie with Maryland (and Washington Foster School of Business, which moved up from 11th); and Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business dropping six places to 17th.

U.S. News‘ part-time ranking “capture(s) our excellence in program innovations around leadership and digital transformation that includes AI, technology management and commercialization, experiential learning, and industry/government networking in our programs,” Smith School Dean Prabhudev Konana says of Maryland’s Flex MBA, a 24-28 month program that doesn’t require applicants to submit a Graduate Management Admission Test score. “And this latest recognition, including by peers across other business schools, reinforces our profile of exceptional students, world-class faculty and innovative curriculum amongst the best and most respected business schools in the country.”

Maryland Smith Associate Dean of MBA Programs Rosellina Ferraro credits the experiential learning and networking components of the Flex MBA, which has campus locations in Baltimore, Rockville, Md., and Washington, D.C. “Our campuses are located in the midst of Smith alumni-led, elite corporations, government agencies, nonprofits and NGOs, and we’re leveraging this into a wealth of opportunities in terms of networking, consulting projects and career advancement more broadly,” she says.

In all, 22 part-time programs in U.S. News‘ top 100 saw double-digit increases in their placement from the previous year; 14 saw double-digit drops. The biggest jump was at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville Haslam College of Business, which vaulted 72 places to 66th from 138th last year. And the biggest drop: Florida State University College of Business, which fell 31 places to 84th from 53rd last year.

NO CHANGES TO METHODOLOGY THIS YEAR

Data for U.S. News‘ part-time MBA ranking (officially the 2025 ranking, though it is based on 2023 data and was released in 2024) was collected from fall 2023 through the early part of 2024. It is based on six factors, same as last year. By far the most important, accounting for 50% of each school’s rank, is a peer assessment score based on surveys of B-school deans and MBA program directors, asking them to rate other programs on a 1-5 scale. This, of course, makes the ranking very much a popularity contest, one that the same schools tend to dominate year after year (Maryland’s big success this year notwithstanding). Chicago Booth’s peer assessment score this year was 4.6, up from 4.5 last year; Berkeley Haas’ was 4.4, down from 4.5; Northwestern Kellogg scored a 4.5, unchanged. Only seven schools scored 4.0 or more.

It’s higher peer assessment gave Booth the edge over peer schools, as did its higher average Graduate Management Admission Test score — which, along with Graduate Record Exam scores, accounts for 10% of each school’s rank. Booth students averaged 691 on the GMAT, second only to Wake Forest University’s 694; Haas, in second place, averaged 686, while Kellogg averaged 676. Booth and Stern were the only B-schools to report 160 medians in both GRE Verbal and GRE Quant.

The other key measures of a school’s score in the part-time ranking: average undergraduate GPA (10%); number of years of work experience of part-time MBA students entering in fall 2021 (5%); percentage of fall 2023 enrollment of part-time students (12.5%); and total part-time enrollment, accounting for 12.5% of a school’s score. Overall, Chicago Booth scored 100 to top the ranking, while Berkeley Haas scored 98, Kellogg 97, Stern 94, and Anderson 89.

NOTABLE DROP IN NUMBER OF RANKED SCHOOLS

U.S. News‘ new part-time MBA ranking had 30 fewer schools this year, with a total of 269 qualifying. Why the decline? As the magazine explains, it “took steps through its data collection to only include in-person and hybrid learning programs whose data is more comparable with one another. Also contributing to the decline in ranked schools was a small decrease in the number of part-time MBA programs submitting surveys.”

Degrees that are mostly online, the magazine writes, were assessed separately in the U.S. News Best Online MBA Programs rankings, which was released in February. Indiana Kelley School of Business topped that ranking; its part-time program ranked 13th, up from 15th last year, tied with the University of Texas-Dallas Jindal School of Management (down from 11th).

See the next pages for the top 100 schools in the 2025 U.S. News Part-Time MBA Ranking.