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.
It makes sense that accepted students would be eager to enroll in highly ranked MBA programs. But the business schools with the highest yield rates aren’t necessarily the most prestigious. The business schools where the highest proportion of accepted students enrolled as full-time MBA candidates in fall 2015 include No. 1-ranked Harvard Business School and West Texas A&M University, which fell among the bottom one-fourth of ranked schools.
[Define MBA goals before applying to graduate school.]
An overwhelming 90.7 percent of students who made the cut for Harvard took advantage of the opportunity. However, prestigious private schools are not the only ones with high yield rates. Four of the 10 schools with the highest yield rates are state schools.
[Determine whether getting an MBA makes financial sense.]
Moreover, some schools with high yield rates are schools that accept most applicants. West Texas A&M University, a public school with a 72.2 percent acceptance rate, had a yield rate of 85.4 percent.
Among the 80 ranked schools that reported their acceptance and enrollment data to U.S. News in an annual survey, the average yield rate was 48.7 percent, and the lowest was 25.8 percent at Hofstra University’s Zarb School of Business.
Listed below are the full-time MBA programs where an acceptance letter is most likely to prompt a student to enroll. Business schools considered for this list accepted a minimum of 100 students; those that accepted fewer than 100 students were not evaluated. Unranked schools, which did not meet certain criteria required by U.S. News to be numerically ranked, were not considered for this report.
| Business school (name) (state) | Students accepted | New students enrolled | Yield rate | U.S. News business school rank |
| Harvard University (MA) | 1,033 | 937 | 90.7% | 1 |
| West Texas A&M University | 130 | 111 | 85.4% | RNP* |
| Stanford University (CA) | 485 | 407 | 83.9% | 2 (tie) |
| Brigham Young University (Marriott) (UT) | 202 | 162 | 80.2% | 31 (tie) |
| University of Alabama (Manderson) | 141 | 109 | 77.3% | 53 (tie) |
| Columbia University (NY) | 1,048 | 762 | 72.7% | 10 |
| University of Tennessee–Knoxville (Haslam) | 105 | 71 | 67.6% | 63 (tie) |
| University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) | 1,302 | 856 | 65.7% | 4 |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan) | 623 | 400 | 64.2% | 5 (tie) |
| University of Wisconsin–Madison | 160 | 99 | 61.9% | 27 (tie) |
* RNP denotes an institution that is ranked in the bottom one-fourth of its ranking category. U.S. News calculates a rank for the school but has decided not to publish it.
Don’t see your school in the top 10? Access the U.S. News Business School Compass to find student enrollment 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 schools for our 2015 survey of 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 comes 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 yield data above are correct as of Dec. 27, 2016.
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10 Business Schools Where Accepted Students Usually Enroll originally appeared on usnews.com
