The 2016–2017 application season is largely behind us, and the Class of 2019 will matriculate this fall at top-ranked business schools around the country. But before we head into the 2017–2018 academic season and find out what the newest incoming class has to offer, we take a look at the Class of 2018, which matriculated last year.
Business schools receive applications each year in massive volumes—for example, Harvard Business School received nearly 10,000 applications last year. However, the schools’ high level of selectivity means only a few applicants are accepted into the MBA program—but the decision does not end there. Many applicants submit more than one application during the season, and some are fortunate enough to be accepted into several great schools, leaving them with the (presumably pleasant) dilemma of deciding which school to attend.
We examined data from top-ranked schools to find out which enroll the largest number of their admits. Harvard Business School came out on top with its incoming class of 942 students, which includes more than 90% of the 1,037 who were admitted last year. The class size at the Stanford Graduate School of Business is notably smaller at 417 individuals, but this figure represents nearly 86% of the mere 487 who received positive admission decisions. Columbia Business School was the third most attractive school to admits, as nearly 76% (776 individuals) of their 1,025 admitted students chose to attend. Such prestigious institutions as the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and MIT Sloan would have likely scored highly in this comparison as well, but admitted student numbers were not available for either school.