50. Nanyang Technological University, Singapore — Nanyang Business School
Location: Singapore
Average starting salary: $80,300
Average GMAT score: 665
Nanyang's double MBA and master's degree programs allow students to earn a simultaneous degree from partner business schools, such as a second MBA from Waseda University in Tokyo or a master's in management from France's ESSEC Business School.
All students also complete a weeklong Business Study Mission, locally or overseas, in which they attend seminars with industry leaders, meet with local business associations, and visit businesses. The study mission gives students an opportunity to build professional networks and apply what they learn in the classroom to real-world environments.
49. University of Toronto — Rotman School of Management
Location: Toronto, Canada
Average starting salary: $88,400
Average GMAT score: 663
The Rotman School of Management is the only Canadian MBA program on our list, offering students the best business reputation in the country. It draws recruiters from Toronto and beyond, including companies like the Royal Bank of Canada, Bain & Co., IBM, Microsoft, and Accenture, among others.
The school started its own venture incubator in 2012 called the Creative Destruction Lab, and Rotman MBA students are tasked with providing analysis and insight for the lab's startups. Its first cohort has generated more than $165 million in equity value.
48. University of Wisconsin — Wisconsin School of Business
Location: Madison, Wisconsin
Average starting salary: $100,700
Average GMAT score: 668
Recent graduates from the Wisconsin School of Business typically landed salaries greater than $100,000, and 90% secured employment within three months of graduation. The small program — WSB has fewer than 200 full-time MBA students — gives students individualized attention from the school's experts: professors, staff, guest speakers, and others.
47. University of Minnesota — Carlson School of Management
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Average starting salary: $106,400
Average GMAT score: 690
There are 17 Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, giving Carlson MBA students access to a world-class business community. The majority of Carlson grads go on to careers in consulting (24%), consumer goods (16%), and healthcare (12%), and they join a network of more than 53,000 alumni in 95 countries. Notable grads include Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf and Target COO John Mulligan.
46. China Europe International Business School — CEIBS
Location: Shanghai, China
Average starting salary: $76,200
Average GMAT score: 690
Shanghai is China's top economic and financial powerhouse, and CEIBS puts students in the heart of it all. Two-thirds of graduates stay in Shanghai, and 21% go into financial services. CEIBS, established in 1994, has been dubbed mainland China's leading business school for its global focus and wide variety of tailored electives. The school also partners with Cornell, Johns Hopkins, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy for students who want to pursue degrees in hospitality management, health administration, and law, respectively.
45. Ramon Llull University — ESADE Business School
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Average starting salary: $72,400
Average GMAT score: 660
ESADE offers a bilingual — English and Spanish — graduate degree in business that provides students the flexibility to heighten their career prospects in a time frame that suits them. The customized program can be completed in 12, 15, or 18 months to allow time for other personal and professional commitments. The 12-month program provides an accelerated MBA degree, while the 18-month program leaves students time for internships, academic exchanges, and other opportunities while completing academic requirements.
44. Brigham Young University — Marriott School of Management
Location: Provo, Utah
Average starting salary: $102,800
Average GMAT score: 670
Named for the family that founded the world-famous chain of hotels, the Marriott School of Management aims to train students for business-leadership roles. The Mormon-affiliated school has five concentrations — entrepreneurship, finance, global supply chain, marketing, and organizational behavior/human-resource management — and at less than $50,000 for the entire program, it's among the most affordable MBA degrees available.
43. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — College of Business
Location: Urbana-Champaign, Illinois
Average starting salary: $91,200
Average GMAT score: 659
While the first year of the MBA program at the College of Business at Illinois focuses on fundamentals and coursework, the second year can be customized with courses inside and outside the school, allowing each student to plot their course to pursue their ideal career. An Illinois MBA is particularly prestigious for those looking to go into consulting. The school's global-consulting program provides students experience with emerging markets and an international business network.
42. Texas A&M — Mays Business School
Location: College Station, Texas
Average starting salary: $100,700
Average GMAT score: 654
Mays Business School took its name in 1996 — 35 years after its founding — when Lowry Mays, founder and former CEO of Clear Channel Communications, gave a $15 million endowment to the school. At just $57,316 in tuition and fees for the 16-month full-time MBA program, it's a sound investment for students, who on average make nearly twice that figure after graduating. Projects like the MBA Venture Challenge, in which students evaluate startup firms' commercial viability, ready them for careers in tech. Forty percent of grads who accepted jobs in 2015 went into the technology industry.
41. Rice University — Jones Graduate School of Business
Location: Houston, Texas
Average starting salary: $111,400
Average GMAT score: 676
At the Jones Graduate School of Business, first-year students take core curriculum courses in finance, marketing, and accounting and participate in an Action Learning Project — a 13-week consultative assignment for an established company. Rice MBA students also have the option to earn up to two degree concentrations from 10 areas, including energy, entrepreneurship, healthcare, and real estate. Ninety-one percent of 2015 grads accepted jobs within 90 days.
40. Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Business School
Location: Hong Kong
Average starting salary: $97,200
Average GMAT score: 656
HKUST Business School offers an Asia-specific business instruction in one of the world's top banking and finance hubs, which is home to 70 of the global top-100 banks and more than 6,000 multinational companies. The full-time MBA program can be completed in 12 or 16 months with an option to participate in an exchange program at one of 60 business schools around the world. Eighty percent of 2014 graduates accepted jobs in Asia after earning their MBA, and 38% started careers in banking and finance.
39. Georgia Tech — Scheller College of Business
Location: Atlanta, Georgia
Average starting salary: $103,500
Average GMAT score: 675
Given Georgia Tech's broader focus, it may not be the first place one looks for an MBA, but its Scheller College of Business provides a well-rounded business education applicable to a variety of industries, not just tech. Still, the public university uses its tech focus to give students a leg up with a more modern and relevant business education that keeps pace with the way technology is changing and influencing business. In 2015, 35% of graduates went into consulting and 22% landed jobs in tech.
38. Michigan State University — Eli Broad College of Business
Location: East Lansing, Michigan
Average starting salary: $101,400
Average GMAT score: 664
At Michigan State, MBA candidates aren't confined to their immediate surroundings. The globally focused curriculum draws on MSU's worldwide programs and recruitment efforts to explore how business practices vary worldwide.
Broad's class of 2015 accepted full-time positions at a multitude of influential companies, with top employers including Apple, Ernst & Young, Intel, Dell, and General Motors.
37. University of Warwick — Warwick Business School
Location: Coventry, England
Average starting salary: $90,800
Average GMAT score: 656
The University of Warwick's business school offers a 12-month MBA program for students with a global-business mind-set that includes an intensive schedule of core and elective modules, a consultancy project, and optional studies abroad. Within 90 days of graduating, 97% of students secured a job in 2015 — one of the highest placement rates on our list. Warwick's top-recruiting companies include Amazon, American Express, Citibank, and Goldman Sachs.
36. Boston University — Questrom School of Business
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Average starting salary: $100,000
Average GMAT score: 682
In March, BU's School of Management was renamed the Questrom School of Business following a $50 million donation from Allen Questrom, the retired CEO of JC Penney, and his wife Kelli — the largest gift in the university's history. Despite the new name, the school's MBA program is one of the oldest in the country, established in 1925. Today, the school focuses on preparing students for careers in digital technology, healthcare, and social enterprise and sustainability, and it has a 93% job-placement rate within three months of graduation.
35. International Institute for Management Development — IMD
Location: Lausanne, Switzerland
Average starting salary: $102,000
Average GMAT score: 670
IMD carefully selects just 90 students for each class of its one-year MBA program, and the program proves career altering for almost all: 94% of the 2014 graduating class changed job function, industry, or geographic location. More than two-thirds of graduates go on to accept jobs in industry positions like manufacturing, technology/media, and consumer products, and the top-hiring companies include Accenture, Amazon, and Cisco Systems.
34. Indiana University — Kelley School of Business
Location: Bloomington, Indiana
Average starting salary: $107,000
Average GMAT score: 668
Indiana's Kelley School of Business not only provides students with a rigorous academic curriculum, but it also builds leadership-development opportunities, such as student clubs and peer coaching, into each semester so students can grow their soft skills.
Kelley touts itself as the largest business-school alumni network in the world and has a 94% job-placement rate within three months of graduation. Top employers include Google, JPMorgan Chase, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Amazon, and PepsiCo.
33. IE Business School
Location: Madrid, Spain
Average starting salary: $77,700
Average GMAT score: 680
IE Business School offers a 12-month international MBA, where students from 90 different countries acquire management experience and expand their cultural intelligence. As the first business school in the world to implement entrepreneurship standards for MBA students, IE reports that 15% of students start their own companies through the school's incubator, Area 31. IE also primes students for careers in consulting and finance — fields in which 38% of 2014 graduates accepted jobs.
32. University of Southern California — Marshall School of Business
Location: Los Angeles, California
Average starting salary: $103,400
Average GMAT score: 690
Graduates of the Marshall School of Business enter an alumni network more than 180,000 strong, with notable names including Kinko's founder Paul Orfalea and former Citigroup chairman and CEO Charles Prince.
In addition to the full-time MBA program, Marshall also offers executive, part-time, and online options so students can tailor their education to what works with their lifestyle.
31. University of Washington — Foster School of Business
Location: Seattle, Washington
Average starting salary: $110,000
Average GMAT score: 688
University of Washington MBA students are mentored by some of Seattle's leading business talent, who foster an out-of-classroom learning experience for the students. Companies that frequently hire students out of the Foster School of Business include Seattle natives Amazon and Starbucks, as well as Johnson & Johnson, McKinsey & Co., and Northwestern Mutual, among others.
30. Washington University in St. Louis — Olin Business School
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Average starting salary: $100,000
Average GMAT score: 695
Olin Business School has one of the highest job-placement rates on our list, with 97% accepting a job within three months of graduation. Approximately 29% of 2014 graduates went on to jobs in financial services — about the same percentage as consumer products (15%) and tech (14%) combined. Olin emphasizes experiential learning catered to students in four key areas: corporate consulting, nonprofit consulting, global studies, and entrepreneurship.
29. University of Navarra — IESE Business School
Location: Madrid, Spain
Average starting salary: $93,000
Average GMAT score: 680
A degree from IESE Business School makes a noticeable difference in graduates' earning potential. The average starting salary before entering the program is $45,000, but that number rises to $93,000 for grads, according to the school. And with IESE's bilingual program, students can become fluent Spanish speakers through the multilingual campus environment and intensive classes and by experiencing daily life in Spain.
28. Vanderbilt University — Owen Graduate School of Management
Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Average starting salary: $108,300
Average GMAT score: 690
Owen Graduate School of Management students often pursue careers in one of six fields: consulting, finance, healthcare, human and organizational performance, marketing, or operations. The top-five companies that hire the most Owen MBA graduates are Emerson, Amazon, SunTrust, Mattel/Fischer-Price, and 3M. Every student in the class of 2016 who sought an internship after their first year had accepted one by June, and 92% of class of 2015 students landed a job within three months of graduating.
27. HEC Paris
Location: Paris, France
Average starting salary: $87,000
Average GMAT score: 685
Since its founding in 1881 by the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry, HEC Paris has become one of the most selective graduate schools in Europe. Its alumni have gone on to run Fortune Global 500 companies like Best Buy, Havas, Michelin, and L'Oréal.
Ninety percent of students accept job offers within 90 days of graduation, and top recruiters for the class of 2014 included Amazon, LinkedIn, and Google.
26. Oxford University — Saïd Business School
Location: Oxford, UK
Average starting salary: $87,700
Average GMAT score: 690
MBA students get a truly global experience during their time at Oxford. For one, the cohorts are diverse — international students make up 95% of the class of 2016 — bringing together viewpoints from a variety of cultures. On top of that, many students also participate in student treks during their year at Oxford, in which they travel to a certain part of the world for a week or two to meet potential recruiters and alumni, gaining a firsthand understanding of what it's like to do business there. Past classes have ventured to Dubai, Singapore, and Silicon Valley.
25. Georgetown University — McDonough School of Business
Location: Washington, DC
Average starting salary: $108,800
Average GMAT score: 692
Georgetown is the nation's oldest Catholic and Jesuit university, established in 1789. Its school of business opened in 1957, and it launched its MBA program in '83. After receiving a $30 million donation in 1998 from Robert Emmett McDonough — a successful businessman and graduate of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service — the b-school was renamed in his honor. The MBA program is a favorite among Wall Street recruiters: Of the 86% of students employed three months after graduating in 2015, 33% accepted jobs in finance.
24. University of Notre Dame — Mendoza College of Business
Location: Notre Dame, Indiana
Average starting salary: $108,200
Average GMAT score: 682
Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business has one of the largest alumni networks in the world, putting students in touch with a wide variety of networking opportunities and business connections. The MBA program's "interim intensive" pairs students with executives at well-known corporations to shadow and help solve real business problems. Mendoza also has a one-year accelerated MBA program for exceptional students who have an undergraduate degree in business or relevant work experience.
23. Emory University — Goizueta Business School
Location: Atlanta, Georgia
Average starting salary: $113,300
Average GMAT score: 678
Goizueta Business School is named after Roberto C. Goizueta, the late CEO of Coca-Cola who led the company from 1981 until he died in 1997. The school, which was founded in 1919 and started offering an MBA in 1954, took Goizueta's name in 1994, and his business philosophy is now a central part of the school's mission: to develop professionals who will add value to their companies by changing the way business is done. The prep pays off: The business school has a 94% job-placement rate within three months of graduation.
22. Carnegie Mellon University — Tepper School of Business
Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Average starting salary: $115,300
Average GMAT score: 687
Tepper graduates are encouraged to pursue careers within one of the four major corporate functions: marketing, finance, consulting, and operations. The career center helps students connect with companies, meet with potential employers, and build their networks. Students are directly recruited by some of the biggest names in business, including Goldman Sachs, IBM, Google, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.
21. University of Texas at Austin — McCombs School of Business
Location: Austin, Texas
Average starting salary: $113,800
Average GMAT score: 694
The McCombs School of Business has an entire team of staff members dedicated to connecting students with recruiters and helping build their networks. Graduates go on to positions at top companies like Apple, GE, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase. Not to mention, an MBA from UT Austin comes with a network of more than 92,000 McCombs School of Business alumni around the world, bonding graduates to a lifelong community.
20. University of North Carolina — Kenan-Flagler Business School
Location: Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Average starting salary: $108,600
Average GMAT score: 701
The Kenan-Flagler Business School complements its core curriculum with a wide variety of experiential learning opportunities in business, finance, and beyond. The school is particularly valuable for those looking to gain experience in the nonprofit sector. Kenan-Flagler's Nonprofit Board Fellows Program places MBA students on nonprofit boards of directors for six months, where they gain exposure to high-level strategy and leadership opportunities. In the past, students have worked with Habitat for Humanity, Our Children's Place, and the Environmental Education Fund.
19. University of Cambridge — Judge Business School
Location: Cambridge, UK
Average starting salary: $108,900
Average GMAT score: 690
Though 89% of students are employed three months out of school, 95% have received job offers within that time period. The one-year MBA program offers a global immersion in traditional business, finance, and other corporate settings, as well as Cambridge's own surrounding tech startup community — charmingly known as Silicon Fen. The MBA class is a diverse one, with students coming from six continents and more than 40 countries.
18. INSEAD
Location: Fontainebleau, France
Average starting salary: $94,100
Average GMAT score: 701
With campuses in France, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi, INSEAD's accelerated 10-month MBA program teaches students to lead and innovate across cultures. At $69,700 for tuition and fees, INSEAD is one of the best-value business schools in the world. Last year, 42% of graduates entered the corporate job sector, and an increasing number of grads accepted jobs in tech, with Amazon and Google both as top-10 recruiters.
17. University of California at Los Angeles — Anderson School of Management
Location: Los Angeles, California
Average starting salary: $114,400
Average GMAT score: 713
UCLA's Anderson School of Management prides itself on "looking to the future to discover and chart what will be." To that end, the school recently established an academic marketing partnership with Google to provide students with insight into Google's pioneering approach to marketing measurement and storytelling. The highest percentage of 2014 graduates (28.3%) accepted jobs in the tech industry, where notable alumni include YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and a number of Google executives.
16. New York University — Stern School of Business
Location: New York, New York
Average starting salary: $112,100
Average GMAT score: 720
Stern's MBA program heavily focuses on individuality, and students can choose up to three specializations, with options including everything from banking to real estate to luxury marketing. Post-graduation, students end up at a range of companies, including Boston Consulting Group, NBCUniversal, Morgan Stanley, and Burberry.
The school takes its name from billionaire property mogul Leonard Stern, who earned his MBA from NYU in 1959 and donated $30 million to construct a new building for the business school in 1988.
15. Cornell University — Johnson Graduate School of Management
Location: Ithaca, New York
Average starting salary: $118,900
Average GMAT score: 691
Students in the one- and two-year MBA tracks participate in the Johnson Graduate School of Management's unique immersion program, in which students spend a semester focusing solely on a specific career path, such as digital technology or investment banking, through electives, site visits, and live case studies.
The school itself takes its name from a business legacy — S.C. Johnson, founder of the global household-product company of the same name. The school adopted the name in 1984 after the Johnson family gave $20 million to it, the largest amount ever given to a business school at the time.
14. University of Michigan — Ross School of Business
Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan
Average starting salary: $118,300
Average GMAT score: 704
The Ross School of Business strives to provide each student with opportunities to advance their career, and it facilitates a team of over 50 peer coaches to help them along the way. Hundreds of well-known companies visit the school to recruit MBA candidates, conducting more than 4,000 interviews for internships and full-time positions for the class of 2015 alone. It paid off: That class landed full-time jobs at a host of prominent companies, with the top employers including Deloitte, McKinsey & Co., Wells Fargo, General Mills, and Microsoft.
13. Duke University — Fuqua School of Business
Location: Durham, North Carolina
Average starting salary: $119,100
Average GMAT score: 696
Ninety-four percent of full-time MBA students at Duke's Fuqua School of Business land jobs within three months of graduation. The top-five recruiters from the school are Deloitte, Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Co., Microsoft, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Deloitte alone hired 50 MBA students during the 2013-14 academic year for jobs and internships. Fuqua also offers a number of joint MBA programs, including JD/MBA, MD/MBA, and MPP/MBA.
12. University of London — London Business School (LBS)
Location: London, England
Average starting salary: $119,200
Average GMAT score: 701
University of London's business school is once again the best outside the US. With 75% of the top-500 global companies based in London, the school is a recruiting and networking gold mine for a host of multinational corporations, including Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey & Co. In addition to earning an MBA, students are required to graduate with a second-language proficiency in one of 15 languages offered by the Modern Language Centre at King's College London.
11. University of Virginia — Darden School of Business
Location: Charlottesville, Virginia
Average starting salary: $119,800
Average GMAT score: 706
The Darden School of Business offers one of the top MBA entrepreneurship programs among b-schools, awarding over $1 million in scholarships annually and offering highly specialized training like Venture Capital Bootcamp, a three-day workshop focused on early-stage investing. Ninety-three percent of Darden grads accept job offers within 90 days of graduation, with a majority (33%) landing in at consulting firms like Bain & Co. and A.T. Kearney.
10. University of California at Berkeley — Haas School of Business
Location: Berkeley, California
Average starting salary: $121,800
Average GMAT score: 715
The second-oldest business school in the US, the Haas School of Business was named for Walter Haas, who was an undergrad at Berkeley and grew Levi Strauss & Co. into the world's largest apparel manufacturer before his death in 1979. Haas boasts impressive diversity within its MBA classes. Typically, more than 30% of each class is composed of women, last year 37% of the class were international students, and 36% identified as minorities.
9. Yale University — Yale School of Management
Location: New Haven, Connecticut
Average starting salary: $119,100
Average GMAT score: 713
Each MBA student at Yale's School of Management is required to complete a global studies course, choosing among the International Experience course, Global Network Courses, Global Network Weeks, or spending a full semester at an exchange partner school. Yale reported that 8.9% of the class of 2014 were hired internationally, with approximately 30% of all grads accepting jobs in finance and accounting.
8. Dartmouth College — Tuck School of Business
Location: Hanover, New Hampshire
Average starting salary: $123,900
Average GMAT score: 716
After their first year in the program, a full 100% of Tuck's class of 2016 gained hands-on experience through summer internships.
Within three months of graduation, 95% of the class of 2015 had accepted job offers, many of them at big-name companies, including Bain & Co., Goldman Sachs, Samsung, Deloitte, and Barclays Capital.
7. Columbia University — Columbia Business School
Location: New York, New York
Average starting salary: $127,600
Average GMAT score: 715
Students begin crafting their network and community within the business world the minute they arrive at Columbia, thanks in part to the school's cluster system, which places first-year students in "clusters" of 65 to 70 people who take all their core classes together. Columbia also counts some of the greatest minds in finance among its alumni, including Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett and former Bank of America executive Sallie Krawcheck.
6. Northwestern University — Kellogg School of Management
Location: Evanston, Illinois
Average starting salary: $121,500
Average GMAT score: 724
Northwestern's business school was established in the early 1900s, but it wasn't until 1979 that the school took the Kellogg name following a $10 million donation from the John L. and Helen Kellogg Foundation — heirs of the family that started the famed cereal company.
The school emphasizes international experience. Its International Growth Lab pairs its students with those at ESADE in Barcelona and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology to develop strategies for solving an international business' real-world problems. Kellogg also offers an accelerated, one-year MBA degree for top students who already have a business background.
5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology — Sloan School of Management
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Average starting salary: $126,300
Average GMAT score: 716
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is not only the best college in America, but it's also home to one of the best business schools. The Sloan School of Management, which celebrated its 100-year anniversary last year, offers three MBA tracks: enterprise management, entrepreneurship and innovation, and finance. Sloan reported that 93% of 2014 graduates accepted job offers within 90 days of graduation at companies like Adobe, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, and 7.4% of grads went on to start their own businesses.
4. Stanford University — Graduate School of Business
Location: Palo Alto, California
Average starting salary: $133,400
Average GMAT score: 729
Perennially ranked as a top-two business school, Stanford failed to reach the summit of our list primarily because its job placement, though still a respectable 86%, was a cut below many other top schools and 6 percentage points below its figure last year. Stanford attributed the drop to students becoming "more selective."
But graduates who did accept a job commanded a hefty starting salary that covers the entire $132,150 price tag for the two-year degree. Top employers include Facebook, Yahoo, Yelp, and a number of other Silicon Valley-based tech companies.
3. Harvard University — Harvard Business School
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Average starting salary: $131,600
Average GMAT score: 725
The world's oldest MBA program, Harvard Business School is also often considered the best. But its hefty price tag — $141,900 — and a solid but not elite job-placement figure of 91% three months after graduation combined to keep HBS out of the top two.
The high average-starting salary its graduates command, the school's reputation with employers, and the HBS network of more than 44,000 living alumni still make it one of the most coveted business schools for students. HBS's cadre of successful alumni — littered with politicians, CEOs, and billionaires — is unrivaled: Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former President George W. Bush, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman, and HP Chairman Meg Whitman all graduated from the institution.
2. University of Chicago — Booth School of Business
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Average starting salary: $125,000
Average GMAT score: 726
Though among the most expensive MBA degrees in the world, the Booth School of Business is the runner-up on our list because it all but guarantees a coveted job: 98% of students from the 2015 class had secured employment within three months of graduation — the highest percentage of any school — and the top-five employers were McKinsey & Co., Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Co., Amazon, and Bank of America.
Booth's full-time MBA program focuses on training students for real-world business scenarios through experiential learning and lab courses where students work with actual early-stage startups. The school also brings in guest lecturers from private-equity and venture-capital companies, and some Booth students intern with the companies and help them evaluate new market and business opportunities.
1. University of Pennsylvania — The Wharton School
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Average starting salary: $127,300
Average GMAT score: 732
The Wharton School earns our top ranking in 2015 for all-around excellence. Though no other American school topped its tuition cost of $144,340, Wharton's stellar reputation, high average starting salary, and 95% job placement within the first three months of graduation make it the most worthwhile investment. No other school's students scored higher on the GMAT, either.
The first business school in the US, Wharton was established in 1881 from a $100,000 donation by industrial tycoon Joseph Wharton. The institute now boasts one of the largest alumni networks among b-schools, including notable figures like John Sculley of Pepsi and Apple, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, and billionaire financier Ron Perelman.
