The Financial Times Ranks Cornell University’s Johnson School Among World’s Top 10 MBA Programs
The Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, part of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, is now ranked the 8th MBA program worldwide among 100 of the top business schools in the Financial Times’ 2023 Global MBA Ranking. Among MBA programs in the United States, the Cornell Johnson School holds the 5th highest ranking. The 100 ranked MBA programs represent the top 4% of the more than 2,500 MBA programs.
The Financial Times rankings are based on data provided by participating schools and alumni, with weighting of roughly 20 different criteria. For 2023, FT added categories to their methodology, to include alumni, diversity, and environmental sustainability, as well as deprioritizing some of the previous criteria.
“I am glad to see that long standing core values of Cornell’s business education—supporting our alumni network, valuing diversity and environmental sustainability—are gaining traction among top rankers, like the Financial Times, as they work to improve their ranking methodologies. And it’s very gratifying to see the excellence of our MBA program acknowledged with this improved approach,” said Andrew Karolyi, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business Charles Field Knight Dean and incoming Chair of the Responsible Research in Business and Management network. “We hope to see the Financial Times and other top rankers continue to place greater value on responsible business research, the relevance of faculty engagement with industry and the work of business schools impacting society for the good.”
Among key metrics, the Financial Times began reporting overall satisfaction scores in 2021 and based those findings on alumni survey data. Historically, the Financial Times has not included this information in the ranking calculation. For 2023, the Johnson School ranked #2 in overall satisfaction, up from #11.
“We’re especially pleased to see that the alumni survey results were woven more fully into the rankings results this year, including the addition of the new Alumni Network category,” said Mark Nelson, the Johnson School’s Anne and Elmer Lindseth Dean. “Our overall satisfaction rating of 9.94 out of 10 is great to see. At the same time, we are continuing to innovate and improve as we strive for excellence across the program.”
With over 15,200 Johnson alumni, the Cornell Johnson School Alumni Network came out #1 in the ranking. The alumni network is a new category in the FT ranking and played an important role in the ratings.
In the area of Faculty research, the Johnson School ranked #3, up from #9 in 2022. The research rank is based on the number of articles by full-time faculty in 50 internationally recognized academic and practitioner journals. The rank combines the number of publications from January 2020 to July 2022, with the number weighted relative to faculty size.
An additional metric of note is the Career Services area with the Johnson School receiving a ranking of #3, up from #7. The Career Services represents the effectiveness of the school career services for counseling, personal development, networking, internship search and recruitment, as rated by the alumni.
Of the 276 Two-Year MBA graduates in the class of 2022, 259 were seeking full-time employment. Almost the entire class—96 percent—obtained a job within three months of graduation.