The U.S. News Short List, separate from our overall rankings, is a regular series that magnifies individual data points in hopes of providing students and parents a way to find which undergraduate or graduate programs excel or have room to grow in specific areas. Be sure to explore The Short List: College, The Short List: Grad School and The Short List: Online Programs to find data that matter to you in your college or grad school search.
Between admissions exams, letters of recommendation and essays, applying to business school can be an arduous process.
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Luckily, some full-time MBA programs have high acceptance rates that might boost applicants’ confidence.
At least 72.9 percent of applicants to full-time programs were accepted at these 10 business schools in fall 2015, according to data submitted to U.S. News in an annual survey. The average acceptance rate among them was 85 percent. In comparison, the average acceptance rate for all 129 schools that reported these data was 44.7 percent.
The University of South Florida had the highest acceptance rate of any full-time MBA program, at 100 percent. The school admitted all 21 of its applicants in fall 2015.
On the list of the 10 programs with the highest acceptance rates, only two — the Freeman School of Business at Tulane University and the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado–Boulder — received published U.S. News ranks. The others are labeled Rank Not Published, or RNP, meaning that they ranked in the bottom one-fourth of their ranking category. U.S. News calculates ranks for these schools but has decided not to publish them.
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On the other end of the spectrum, the schools with the lowest admittance rates included Stanford University in California, which ranks in a tie for No. 2 and admitted only 6.1 percent of applicants for the fall of 2015, and Harvard University, which ranks No. 1 and accepted 10.7 percent of applicants. In contrast with all the business schools with the highest acceptance rates, these institutions both had thousands of applicants.
Below is a list of the 10 business schools with the highest full-time acceptance rates in fall 2015. Unranked schools, which did not submit enough data to U.S. News to be ranked, were not considered for this report.
| School (name) (state) | Full-time applicants | Full-time acceptances | Full-time acceptance rate | U.S. News rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| University of South Florida | 21 | 21 | 100% | RNP |
| Northern Arizona University (Franke) | 52 | 50 | 96.2% | RNP |
| Belmont University (Massey) (TN) | 37 | 34 | 91.9% | RNP |
| Missouri University of Science & Technology | 145 | 123 | 84.8% | RNP |
| Appalachian State University (Walker) (NC) | 32 | 27 | 84.4% | RNP |
| Coastal Carolina University (SC) | 69 | 58 | 84.1% | RNP |
| Oklahoma State University (Spears) | 53 | 44 | 83% | RNP |
| Tulane University (Freeman) (LA) | 129 | 101 | 78.3% | 68 (tie) |
| University of Colorado–Boulder (Leeds) | 259 | 194 | 74.9% | 77 (tie) |
| Clarkson University (NY) | 144 | 105 | 72.9% | RNP |
Don’t see your school in the top 10? Access the U.S. News Business School Compass to find admissions data, complete rankings and much more. School officials can access historical data and rankings, including of peer institutions, via U.S. News Academic Insights.
U.S. News surveyed 470 colleges and universities for our 2015 survey of graduate business programs. Schools self-reported myriad data regarding their academic programs and the makeup of their student body, among other areas, making U.S. News’ data the most accurate and detailed collection of college facts and figures of its kind. While U.S. News uses much of this survey data to rank schools for our annual Best Business Schools rankings, the data can also be useful when examined on a smaller scale. U.S. News will now produce lists of data, separate from the overall rankings, meant to provide students and parents a means to find which schools excel, or have room to grow, in specific areas that are important to them. While the data come from the schools themselves, these lists are not related to, and have no influence over, U.S. News’ rankings of Best Colleges, Best Graduate Schools or Best Online Programs. The admissions data above are correct as of June 7, 2016.
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10 MBA Programs With the Highest Acceptance Rates originally appeared on usnews.com
