2022 was a great year for applicants to the leading full-time MBA programs in the United States.
2023 brought applicants plenty of good news, too.
Acceptance rates at the top B-schools climbed for a second straight year in 2023, rising at more than half of the top 50 MBA programs, including and 18 of the top 25. Five of the elite M7 B-schools saw their acceptance rates climb year over year.
The loosening of schools’ selectivity stems directly from a long-term fragility in interest: MBA applications fell for a second straight year at many schools — including all but two of the 17 top-ranked programs — and are down significantly over the last three years at many top B-schools. Yield, the percentage of admits who actually enroll, fell at a wide majority of schools in P&Q‘s ranking, including seven of the top 10 schools and 20 of the top 25 — giving B-schools even more incentive to be generous in their admissions.
And B-schools have been generous, with many growing their enrollment: Thirty-five of 53 top schools increased their number of admits from 2022 to 2023, some by more than 100 seats, and about half the top 50 B-schools increased their MBA class sizes. The result: For many MBA candidates, it became easier in 2023 to get into the program of their choice.
ACCEPTANCE RATES & MORE AT THE P&Q TOP 10: 2016 TO 2023
| Data For P&Q Top 10 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2-Year Trend | 8-Year Trend |
| Acceptance Rate (Average) | 27.8% | 22.2% | 18.4% | 22.3% | 19.7% | 17.2% | 16.0% | 14.5% | +5.6 | +13.3 |
| Applications | 39,584 | 48,968 | 57,975 | 57,187 | 50,439 | 53,907 | 57,311 | 54,694 | -9,384 | -15,110 |
| Admits | 9,337 | 9,964 | 9,484 | 11,324 | 8,664 | 8,397 | 8,309 | 7,934 | -627 | +1,403 |
| Enrolled | 4,411 | 5,388 | 5,459 | 5,500 | 5,361 | 5,446 | 5,349 | 5,100 | -977 | -689 |
| Yield (Average) | 48.5% | 53.9% | 57.6% | 48.6% | 61.9% | 64.9% | 64.4% | 64.3% | -5.4 | -15.8 |
Schools included in 2023 calculations: Stanford, Harvard, Dartmouth Tuck, Columbia, Yale, Duke Fuqua, Cornell Johnson, Virginia Darden, Michigan Ross, NYU Stern
JUST 9 B-SCHOOLS IN THE TOP 100 HAD ACCEPTANCE RATES BELOW 20%
Acceptance rates climb at some business schools and fall at others every year. Some shifts can be credited to normal market fluctuations — but in 2023, the trend was clearly to open the gates a little wider for those looking to get an MBA. Acceptance rates grew at 31 schools from 2022 to 2023, up from 29 schools from 2021 to 2022; correspondingly, the ranks of schools with highly selective rates shrank: Only nine B-schools in the P&Q top 100 reported rates below 20% in 2023, eight of them in the top 50. In 2022, there were nine schools in the top 50 alone.
Likewise, in 2023 there were 24 B-schools with rates below 30%, 18 of them in the top 50; in 2022, there were 24 in the top 50; in 2021, there were 27.
The elite B-schools are the canaries in the coal mine: In the top 10, seven increased their acceptance rates; while admits and enrollment were down overall across the 10 schools once again in 2023, the cumulative acceptance rate grew significantly for a second straight year, to 27.8% from 22.2% (see table above). One caveat: Because the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania dropped out of P&Q‘s top 10, the numbers for 2023 are not perfectly comparable to previous years. But even if you dropped Cornell or Stern or Duke or Darden from the table and added Wharton, there would still be a rise in acceptance rate — and, troublingly from a school perspective, a big drop in applications.
Regardless, acceptance rate growth is not restricted to the elite of the elite. In the top 25, only seven schools decreased their rates. In 2022, the same number of top-25 B-schools decreased their acceptance rates — but back in 2021, 21 did. (See the table below for acceptance rates at the top 53 B-schools, and the table on page 5 for rates, applications, admits, class sizes, and yield at the top 100 schools.)
AFTER STANFORD, A PUBLIC B-SCHOOL REPORTED THE LOWEST ACCEPTANCE RATE IN 2023
In the P&Q top 25, the biggest jump in acceptance rate occurred at No. 17 Washington Foster School of Business, where it jumped 13.5 percentage points to 41.6% from 28.1%. Widening to the top 50, the biggest jump was at No. 49 Rutgers Business School, which inflated its rate by 15.8 points to 41.9% from 26.1%.
Not every school made it easier to get in. Big declines in acceptance rates occurred last year, as they do every year. The biggest in the top 25 was at No. 25 Florida Warrington College of Business, whose Hough MBA program dropped its selectivity 5.9 percentage points to 30.2% from 36.1%. In the top 50, the biggest decline was at No. 27 Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business, which fell 12.9 points to 19.4% from 32.3%.
The highest acceptance rate in the top 10 was once again at Dartmouth Tuck School of Business, at 40.1%. Tuck, ranked No. 3 in 2023, has grown its acceptance rate a couple of years in a row, up from 33.4% in 2022 and 29.5% in 2021. In the top 25, the highest rate was at No. 24 Georgetown McDonough School of Business: 61.8%, Georgetown, too, has seen two years of increases, up from 50.9% in 2022 and 48.1% in 2021.
In the top 50, the highest rate was No. 48 Babson Olin Graduate School of Business: 64.3%. And the highest in the top 100: No. 97 Willamette Atkinson Graduate School of Management in Salem, Oregon: 99%.
Stanford Graduate School of Business once again boasted the only sub-10% acceptance rate of any school, clocking in at 8.4%, down slightly from 8.6% last year but still better — from an applicant’s perspective — than the 6.2% of 2021. Apart from Stanford, the lowest rate in the top 50 was not an Ivy League school or an M7: It was No. 50 Ohio State Fisher College of Business, at 12.2%. Harvard Business School was close behind at 13.2%.
MBA ACCEPTANCE RATES AT THE TOP U.S. B-SCHOOLS: 2020 TO 2023
| P&Q 2024 Rank | School | 2023 Acceptance Rate | 2022 Acceptance Rate | 2021 Acceptance Rate | 2020 Acceptance Rate | 4-Year Average* |
| 1 | Stanford GSB | 8.4% | 8.6% | 6.2% | 7.2% | 7.6% |
| 2 | Harvard Business School | 13.2% | 14.4% | 12.6% | 12.0% | 13.1% |
| 3 | Dartmouth (Tuck) | 40.1% | 33.4% | 29.5% | 34.8% | 34.5% |
| 4 | Columbia Business School | 22.4% | 19.7% | 15.7% | 16.2% | 18.5% |
| 5 | Yale SOM | 32.9% | 27.6% | 23.6% | 29.7% | 28.5% |
| 6 | Duke (Fuqua) | 22.1% | 20.5% | 19.2% | 25.0% | 21.7% |
| 7 | Cornell (Johnson) | 29.9% | 31.2% | 29.5% | 39.6% | 32.6% |
| 8 | Virginia (Darden) | 39.4% | 34.2% | 29.9% | 35.6% | 34.8% |
| 9 | Michigan (Ross) | 38.0% | 28.1% | 20.2% | 37.0% | 30.8% |
| 10 | New York (Stern) | 31.4% | 27.1% | 19.5% | 28.7% | 26.7% |
| 11 | Chicago (Booth) | 32.6% | 30.1% | 22.6% | 22.0% | 26.8% |
| 12 | Northwestern (Kellogg) | 33.3% | 31.4% | 26.0% | 20.0% | 27.7% |
| 13 | UCLA (Anderson) | 40.4% | 37.6% | 29.8% | 35.3% | 35.8% |
| 14 | MIT (Sloan) | 17.8% | 14.8% | 12.1% | 22.0% | 16.7% |
| 15 | UC-Berkeley (Haas) | 23.0% | 19.6% | 17.6% | 23.3% | 20.9% |
| 16 | Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) | 28.5% | 28.8% | 29.7% | 27.4% | 28.6% |
| 17 | Washington (Foster) | 41.6% | 28.1% | 35.2% | 41.3% | 36.6% |
| 18 | Rice (Jones) | 39.0% | 42.8% | 42.0% | 39.5% | 40.8% |
| 19 | Texas-Austin (McCombs) | 37.9% | 34.1% | 35.5% | 37.0% | 36.1% |
| 20 | North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler) | 37.6% | 35.9% | 44.3% | 50.6% | 42.1% |
| 21 | Vanderbilt (Owen) | 40.1% | 39.9% | 44.0% | 46.3% | 42.6% |
| 22 | Southern California (Marshall) | 22.9% | 24.8% | 23.0% | 24.3% | 23.8% |
| 23 | Emory (Goizueta) | 39.1% | 37.1% | 53.1% | 46.1% | 43.9% |
| 24 | Georgetown (McDonough) | 61.8% | 50.9% | 48.1% | 57.0% | 54.5% |
| 25 | Florida (Warrington) | 30.2% | 36.1% | 23.9% | 26.6% | 29.2% |
| 26 | Rochester (Simon) | 14.2% | 14.7% | 21.9% | 24.5% | 18.8% |
| 27 | Georgia Institute of Technology (Scheller) | 19.4% | 32.3% | 27.1% | 37.3% | 29.0% |
| 28 | Washington (Olin) | 27.9% | 25.5% | 33.7% | 47.0% | 33.5% |
| 29 | Georgia (Terry) | 35.5% | 33.7% | 40.8% | 37.4% | 36.9% |
| 30 | Notre Dame (Mendoza) | 33.2% | 32.7% | 41.6% | 49.0% | 39.1% |
| 31 | Pennsylvania (Wharton) | 24.8% | 22.8% | 18.2% | 25.0% | 22.7% |
| 32 | Brigham Young (Marriott) | 56.2% | 47.3% | 60.7% | 42.9% | 51.8% |
| 33 | Texas-Dallas (Jindal) | 33.2% | 34.0% | 33.3% | 40.9% | 35.4% |
| 34 | William & Mary (Mason) | 59.2% | 55.3% | 52.8% | 68.1% | 58.9% |
| 35 | Arizona State (Carey) | 16.2% | 18.0% | 16.8% | 22.2% | 18.3% |
| 37 | Indiana (Kelley) | 27.3% | 23.5% | 31.5% | 42.7% | 31.3% |
| 38 | Michigan State (Broad) | 17.4% | 23.0% | 44.7% | 47.0% | 33.0% |
| 39 | Maryland (Smith) | 34.0% | 35.5% | 43.3% | 45.8% | 39.7% |
| 40 | UC-Irvine (Merage) | 24.0% | 20.6% | 28.3% | 20.3% | 23.3% |
| 41 | Boston University (Questrom) | 36.0% | 27.5% | 33.9% | 51.3% | 37.2% |
| 42 | George Washington | 25.8% | 28.4% | NA | NA | 27.1% |
| 43 | Texas A&M (Mays) | 47.2% | 42.2% | 42.9% | 42.3% | 43.7% |
| 44 | Minnesota (Carlson) | 46.9% | 37.8% | 37.3% | 53.8% | 44.0% |
| 46 | Southern Methodist (Cox) | 24.1% | 30.8% | 24.9% | 35.9% | 28.9% |
| 49 | Rutgers Business School | 41.9% | 26.1% | 43.9% | 42.0% | 38.5% |
| 50 | Ohio State (Fisher) | 12.2% | 15.1% | 22.5% | 40.0% | 22.5% |
| 52 | Pittsburgh (Katz) | 34.5% | 39.6% | 44.6% | 36.6% | 38.8% |
| 53 | Wisconsin | 49.6% | 39.3% | 46.7% | 46.3% | 45.5% |
| 55 | Utah (Eccles) | 52.0% | 61.6% | 57.6% | 43.3% | 53.6% |
| 59 | Penn State (Smeal) | 18.5% | 18.5% | 18.6% | 20.1% | 18.9% |
| 62 | Tennessee-Knoxville (Haslam) | 51.4% | 64.0% | 53.1% | 43.7% | 53.1% |
| 72 | Alabama (Manderson) | 31.5% | 46.2% | 48.2% | NA | 42.0% |
| 73 | University of Miami (Herbert) | 58.3% | 80.1% | 57.3% | NA | 65.2% |
| *3- or 2-year average where data for four years in unavailable |
Source: U.S. News & World Report data and P&Q analysis
See pages 2, 3, and 4 for detailed year-to-year data breakdowns on apps, admits, class sizes, and yield at 53 of the top U.S. MBA programs; and see page 5 for this year’s stats for the top 100 U.S. MBA programs.
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