Financial Times has released their annual continent-by-continent rankings of Business schools in the Americas, the Asia-Pacific region and Europe. While Financial Times has long kept a ranking of European business schools, the Asia-Pacific and Americas rankings are only in their second year.

Unlike the Financial Times global MBA ranking, these rankings tally how schools fared in rankings of multiple different degree programs.

Specifically, the continental rankings take into account how schools stack up in FT’s rankings of MBA programs, EMBA programs, executive education programs, and Master in Management programs (for Asian and European schools).

In the long-running European rankings, London Business School came in first, making it a repeat winner from last year. Altogether, the top five (out of 25) were:

1. London Business School
2. HEC Paris
3. INSEAD
4. University of St. Gallen
5. IESE Business School

 For FT’s newer ranking of schools in the Americas, the top ten were dominated by schools in the United States. The highest-ranked non-US school was INCAE Business School in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The top five were:

1. University of Pennsylvania Wharton School
2. MIT Sloan School of Management
3. Columbia Business School
4. (tie) University of Chicago Booth School of Business
5. (tie) University of Michigan Ross School of Business

Finally, in FT’s similarly new ranking of schools in the Asia-Pacific region, China, Singapore and India  all made appearances in the top five: 

1. Shanghai Jiao Tong University Antai College of Economics and Management
2. CEIBS
3. National University of Singapore Business School
4. Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad
5. HKUST Business School

If these lists look different than what you’d expect based on MBA rankings, FT says that’s part of the point. The rankings are designed to take into account the strength of B-schools’ offerings across multiple degree programs.

For example, FT points out that Michigan’s Ross School was 26 in the global MBA ranking but leapt into a tie for fourth in the ranking of business schools in the Americas. Ross’s secret? In large part, its open-enrollment executive education program, which ranked second.

Similarly, Antai’s MBA program was a modest eighth, but the school dominated the MiM and both executive education categories, resulting in a first-place finish overall.

FT maintains separate rankings for each continent because comparing schools across continents soon gets tricky: some degrees (like the MiM) are more common on some continents than others, and typical program lengths also differ from one region to the next.

As an applicant, knowing how to compare potential business schools in different geographic locations is difficult for similar reasons. How does a highly selective school in Europe stack up with one in the Americans or in Asia, in terms of the admissions process for example? 

We can help answer these types of questions by giving you feedback on how your profile lines up at different schools and what you can do to stand out to adcoms at these schools. To get started, ask us for a free assessment!