The 37-Factor Program Scorecard, fully documented.
Every program we rank is measured against the same 37 weighted factors across seven scoring families — ROI, Placement, Salary Lift, Alumni Mobility, Admissions Selectivity, Program Fit, and Outcomes Transparency. Below: the model, the data, and the 90-day audit cycle that keeps the numbers honest.
A scoring model, not an editorial ranking.
The 37-Factor Program Scorecard evaluates each accredited MBA, Executive MBA, and Online MBA program against 37 weighted quantitative factors drawn from seven scoring families. Inputs include verified alumni salary and placement records, school-reported employment reports, IPEDS filings, and LinkedIn cross-checks. The model is rebuilt every 90 days; weights are recalibrated against the prior three admissions cycles to prevent drift. Sponsored placements never enter organic rankings — they are clearly labeled and suppressed from the algorithmic score. The result: a scorecard that admits no school is "best overall," and quantifies fit for a specific applicant profile instead.
— MBA Courses Research Desk · Boston & London
Seven scoring families, 37 factors in total.
Each family aggregates between four and six factors. Weights are not fixed: they are recalibrated each cycle against the prior three years of admissions outcomes, so a family that better predicts post-MBA salary lift and placement earns a larger share of the composite score.
-
01
Return on Investment
Five factors · Weight range 16–22%
Total program cost net of average scholarship; opportunity cost modeled at the applicant's pre-MBA salary; payback period in months; five-year cumulative earnings lift; cohort-level debt-to-income ratio at graduation.
- Net cost (tuition + living − average institutional aid)
- Opportunity cost at applicant median pre-MBA salary
- Payback period in months
- Five-year cumulative earnings lift
- Debt-to-income at graduation
-
02
Placement Outcomes
Six factors · Weight range 14–19%
Three-month post-graduation placement rate; six-month placement rate; offer-to-acceptance ratio; industry distribution concentration; recruiter count per cohort; signed-offer quality (industry, function, and tenure-adjusted compensation band).
- 3-month job acceptance rate
- 6-month job acceptance rate
- Offer-to-acceptance ratio
- Industry concentration (HHI index)
- Recruiter count per cohort
- Signed-offer quality score
-
03
Salary Lift
Five factors · Weight range 15–20%
Median signing bonus; median base salary at three months; percentage change in compensation versus pre-MBA; percentage of cohort receiving signing bonus; compensation by function (consulting, product, finance, general management).
- Median signing bonus (USD, PPP-adjusted)
- Median base salary at 3 months
- % compensation change vs. pre-MBA
- % cohort receiving signing bonus
- Compensation by function band
-
04
Alumni Mobility
Four factors · Weight range 8–12%
Function-switching rate post-MBA; industry-switching rate; geographic mobility index (LinkedIn-verified location change at 1- and 5-year marks); promotion rate to senior management, director, VP, or partner within five years of graduation.
- Function-switch rate post-MBA
- Industry-switch rate post-MBA
- Geographic mobility (1yr & 5yr)
- Promotion to senior mgmt within 5 years
-
05
Admissions Selectivity
Five factors · Weight range 10–14%
Acceptance rate; yield rate; median GMAT/GRE/EA score of matriculants; undergraduate GPA distribution; percentage of international students. Selectivity is weighted against program fit — a 100% acceptance rate at a mission-driven program is not penalized if placement outcomes are strong.
- Acceptance rate
- Yield rate (admit-to-enroll)
- Median standardized test score
- Undergraduate GPA distribution
- % international matriculants
-
06
Program Fit
Six factors · Weight range 6–10%
Format-fit scores for full-time, part-time, Executive MBA, and online modalities; class size and faculty-to-student ratio; curriculum flexibility (electives, concentrations, dual-degree options); student-reported satisfaction (NPS-equivalent, independent survey).
- Format-fit score by modality
- Class size & faculty ratio
- Curriculum flexibility index
- Concentration & dual-degree breadth
- Independent student NPS
- Alumni network reach index
-
07
Outcomes Transparency
Six factors · Weight range 5–9%
Public availability of employment report; reporting standard (MBA CSEA or equivalent); response rate to alumni survey; cohort disclosure (size, demographic breakdown); median disclosure (vs. mean); currency of last published report.
- Public employment report available
- Reporting standard adherence
- Alumni survey response rate
- Cohort size & demographic disclosure
- Median (not just mean) reporting
- Reporting currency (months since last)
What the model is built on.
Dataset snapshot: Q4 2024 cohort. All counts reflect accredited, actively-recruiting programs as of the publication date.
How the numbers are kept honest.
Every 90 days, the Research Desk runs the same five-step audit against the full 480-program set. The output of each cycle is timestamped, archived, and cited inside every scorecard detail page.
-
Day 1–14 · Collection
Source pull and primary data ingestion.
We ingest each school's most recent employment report, IPEDS filings, AACSB or EQUIS reaccreditation records, and the prior cycle's alumni survey responses. Program websites are scraped for tuition, modality, and curriculum changes. Sponsored placements are segregated at intake and never reach the scoring pipeline.
-
Day 15–35 · Alumni cross-check
Self-reports reconciled against LinkedIn.
Alumni salary and placement records are reconciled against current LinkedIn-reported titles and employers. Records that diverge by more than one standard deviation are flagged, re-contacted, or excluded from the cohort dataset. This is the stage where most data-quality issues are caught.
-
Day 36–55 · Validation
Outlier review and methodology audit.
The 38-person research team — including 9 former admissions committee members from Wharton, INSEAD, LBS, Booth, and HBS — reviews outliers, validates family-level distributions, and confirms that new programs meet the accreditation and reporting thresholds required for inclusion.
-
Day 56–75 · Recalibration
Family weights re-fit against outcomes.
Family weights are re-fit by regressing each family's score against five-year alumni compensation and placement outcomes across the prior three cohorts. New weights are applied at the family level, never at the individual program level. Sponsored programs remain excluded from the regression.
-
Day 76–90 · Publish & archive
Scorecards released with a timestamped audit hash.
The refreshed composite scores are published, each program detail page is updated, and an immutable audit hash is generated for the cycle. Previous cycles remain accessible from each program page so readers can compare the 2022, 2023, and 2024 vintages against the current one.
Every source we draw from, and what we don't do.
The Scorecard is auditable. Below is the complete list of primary data sources used in the current cycle, plus the editorial-standards disclosures that govern how we handle sponsored program placements.
Primary data sources
- School-reported employment reports — the most recent graduate employment report published by each program, formatted to MBA CSEA standards where available.
- IPEDS & national higher-education filings — U.S. Department of Education IPEDS submissions for U.S. programs; equivalent national filings for non-U.S. programs.
- Alumni self-reported outcomes — 142,000+ verified alumni salary and placement records, collected through direct outreach and cross-checked against LinkedIn-reported current employer and title.
- LinkedIn cross-checks — current title, employer, and tenure used as a passive corroboration signal for self-reported alumni outcomes.
- AACSB, EQUIS, and AMBA accreditation registries — used to confirm program accreditation status, accreditation renewal date, and any conditional or probationary standing.
- Program websites & curriculum catalogs — current tuition, modality, electives, dual-degree options, and faculty rosters, scraped quarterly for change detection.
- GMAT / GRE / EA waiver eligibility data — the waiver-eligibility checker covering 180+ partner institutions is the only public tool of its kind and is updated each cycle.
Editorial standards
- No paid placement. Rankings cannot be bought. Every sponsored program is clearly labeled "Sponsored" and its algorithmic ranking is suppressed from organic results.
- No "best overall" claim. No school is best for every applicant. Every scorecard is presented as a fit signal for a specific profile, never as a universal ranking.
- Cited cohort year. Every salary and placement figure cites the cohort year and reporting methodology. We do not publish unverified figures.
- Scholarship outcomes are illustrative. Scholarship matching surfaces institutional aid; we do not promise specific amounts. Average matched applicant scholarship lift (23% vs. self-guided) is cited with the 2023–2024 cohort study it was drawn from.
- Historical rankings are labeled. Pre-2022 rankings are accessible only as historical reference and are clearly labeled by cycle year.
- Press citations. MBA Courses has been cited 47 times in tier-1 business press in the past 24 months, including The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, the Financial Times, and The Economist. Cited coverage is linked from our press page.
- Audit trail. Each published cycle carries an immutable timestamp and audit hash. Prior cycles remain accessible from every program detail page.
Tell us your profile. We'll tell you which programs the model flags for you.
Submit a short profile and we'll return a matched program list scored against the same 37 factors above — including the programs your self-guided search would have missed. No paid placement, no sponsored results in the match list.
- 2.1 million prospective students used the platform in 2024.
- Average user requests information from 4.7 schools and applies to 3.2 — vs. an industry average of 1.6 applications per applicant.
- $48M in verified institutional aid surfaced to users in the 2022–2024 admissions cycles.