I was talking to a chap over the weekend who is interested in one day starting his own business, but first he thinks he needs to learn about business and ideally he’d like to do so at, as he put it "one of the best business schools in the world". Now regular readers will know that I believe that an MBA can benefit an entrepreneur, however I don’t believe that an entrepreneur needs to go to the best business school in the world, or even one of the top 10, 20 or even 100 for that matter. Besides "best" is somewhat subjective and how you determine which is the best business school to study at will depend on what you hope to get out of the MBA.

In my opinion, would be entrepreneurs are almost certainly better off opting for a local school that they can attend part time, or a distance learning course. Both options can be studied whilst either gaining experience within an industry (working for others) or running a small business. Simply put I think the best business school in the world is the school of hard knocks (aka the school of life), so getting out there and gaining some real experience in a business in the industry you want to be in is far more beneficial than a top ranked business school. Besides whether you study at Wharton, Harvard, LBS or a lesser ranking school like Leicester you’ll be learning the same theory, probably from the same text books.

The Ten Best Business Schools In The World

However if you really want to know which is considered the best, here’s the top ten lists that are commonly cited. 

The Financial Times provides an international list:

1. University of Pennsylvania: Wharton
2. London Business School
3. Harvard Business School
4. Columbia Business School
5. Insead France / Singapore
6. Stanford University GSB
7. IE Business School Spain
8. Ceibs China
9. MIT: Sloan
10. New York University: Stern

Business Week provides a top 10 US and top 10 international (non-US). The top 10 international are:

1. Queen’s University
2. IE Business School
3. INSEAD
4. Western Ontario (Ivey)
5. London Business School
6. ESADE
7. IMD
8. Toronto (Rotman)
9. IESE
10. Oxford (Saîd)

and the top 10 US:

1. University of Chicago (Booth)
2. Harvard University
3. Northwestern University (Kellogg)
4. University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
5. University of Michigan (Ross)
6. Stanford University
7. Columbia University
8. Duke University (Fuqua)
9. MIT (Sloan)
10. UC Berkeley (Haas)

Forbes also groups their top ten in to US and non-US groups. The US top ten is (from 2007 as they don’t seem to have an up-to-date list):

1. Dartmouth (Tuck)
2. Stanford University
3. Harvard University
4. Virginia (Darden)
5. University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
6. Columbia New York
7. Chicago
8. Yale New Haven
9. Northwestern University (Kellogg)
10. Cornell (Johnson)

The top ten non-US are:

1. IESE
2. London Business School
3. Manchester Business School
4. York (Schulich), Toronto
5. Ipade
6. Australian GSOM
7. British Columbia (Sauder)
8. Esade
9. Ceibs
10. HEC-Paris

All rankings cited above correct at the time of publication.

As you can see there are considerable differences in the lists suggested by Forbes, BusinessWeek and the Financial Times. Whilst they are all undoubted excellent business schools, unless you’re aiming for a high flying career in an investment bank, private equity firm, hedge fund and the like (in which case why are you reading Business Opportunities and Ideas?) you’re going to get better value for money from a lesser known local school or good distance learning provider.

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