QS has released its 2021 edition of the MBA by Career Specialisation Rankings.
The 2021 QS MBA Career Specialisation Rankings deliver insight into the world’s top business schools for seven different specialist areas of employment. These specialist areas are consulting, entrepreneurship, finance, information management, marketing, operations management, and technology.
For this year’s edition, QS has published 100 programs in each of the career specialisation areas. This gives prospective MBA students a valuable basis on deciding which institutions fit them best, particularly if their main purpose is to be employed in one of the specialist areas.
For consulting, INSEAD from France takes the top spot with an overall score of 96.1. The institute also earns perfect scores on career placements and employer reputation. UK’s London Business School places second with an overall score of 96, and a perfect score on employer reputation. Meanwhile, MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan) from the USA takes third place with an overall score of 95.4.
For entrepreneurship, the top three spots are also from the USA. Stanford Graduate School of Business takes first place with an overall score of 94.8. Notably, they earn a perfect score on employer reputation. MIT Sloan takes second place with an overall score of 90.7. Harvard Business School takes third with an overall score of 90.2.
For finance, most universities and institutions in the top 10 list are from the USA. Penn (Wharton) places first with a total score of 97 and receives outstanding scores in career placement and employer reputation. Stanford Graduate School of Business takes the second position while collecting a top score on employer reputation. In the third spot this year, we have Harvard Business School with an overall score of 95.4, who also have a perfect score on employer reputation.
For information management, MIT Sloan takes first place with an overall score of 91.9. Michigan (Ross), also from the USA, ranks second with an overall score of 88.3. Northwestern (Kellogg) takes third place with an overall score of 87.6.
For marketing, USA institutions dominate the top three positions. Stanford Graduate School of Business places first with a total score of 90.5. Michigan (Ross) takes the second place with an overall score of 86.4. UCLA places third with an overall score of 85.9.
For operations management, MIT Sloan takes the top spot with an overall score of 87.6. They earn a score of 99.1 on employer reputation. Michigan State ranks second with an overall score of 82.9. Both institutions are from the USA. IE Business School from Spain takes third place with an overall score of 81.4.
For technology, MIT Sloan once again lands the first position with an overall score of 95.2. Stanford Graduate School of Business takes second place with an overall score of 94.4.
Overall, most institutions and universities from this year’s rankings are from the USA and UK. A great lesson can be learned from the top ranking schools in noting their commitment to industry interface, which greatly supports high performance in indicators such as graduate placements and employer reputation. The culture of connecting real-world industry with business education has been practiced for many years in the US and UK and you can see the fruits of this sustained effort in these ranking results. – Head of Training and Consulting, Knowledge E, Samantha Miles
QS MBA by Career Specialisation Rankings Methodology
The 2021 QS MBA by Specialisation Rankings is based on the 2021 QS Global MBA Ranking. There are different indicators across seven industrial and functional specialisations. The ranking announces the top 100 MBA institutes in the respective specialisations. The rankings also cover study opportunities from more than 20 different countries and 80 cities.
The 2021 QS MBA by Specialisation Rankings are made up of three general categories, which are composed of six indicators that are weighted differently based on the specialisation in question.
Career placements are composed of scores that combine insights on the percent of graduates from an MBA program going into a relevant industry, role or starting their own business. This is weighed by an absolute placement score, which balances class size against the proportional outcome statistics.
Employer reputation is collected from responses to the last five years of the QS Global Employer Survey, with the most recent years weighing more significantly. This category contains the employer reputation of specific business schools based on how valuable a given specialisation is to the company.
Research strength is a combination of the Full-time MBA research (50%) and the Specialisation MBA research (50%). Both scores are calculated from SCOPUS data on research productivity, for subjects relevant to specific MBA specialisations. The category aims to measure how well each school in the targeted business discipline is associated with their particular specialisation.
The combined final score of the noted indicators is measured with the overall score from the most recent global MBA ranking. A high number of 25% contributes to the final specialisation score presented in the 2021 QS MBA by Specialisation Rankings.
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