FT Masters in Management 2022 Ranking: methodology
This is the 18th edition of the FT ranking of Masters in Management (MiM) programmes.
A record 135 MiM programmes took part in the ranking process in 2022, up from 124 in 2021. Schools must meet strict criteria in order to be eligible. Their programmes must be full-time, cohort-based and schools must be accredited by either the AACSB or Equis bodies. Courses must be directed at students with little or no work experience. The ranking covers general management programmes, not specialised ones.
The table is calculated according to information collected through two separate surveys. The first is completed by the business schools and the second by alumni who finished their MiM in 2019.
The FT typically requires a response rate of 20 per cent of alumni, with a minimum of 20 responses, for a school to enter the ranking calculations. Due to the pandemic, the FT considered schools with a lower response rate. Some 7,052 alumni completed this year’s survey — a response rate of about 25 per cent.
FT Masters in Management ranking 2022 — top 100
Find out which schools are in our ranking of Masters in Management degrees. Learn how the table was compiled and read the rest of our coverage at ft.com/mim
The ranking has 16 criteria. Alumni responses inform seven criteria that together contribute 59 per cent of the ranking’s total weight. The remaining nine criteria are calculated from school data and account for 41 per cent of the weight.
The current average salary of alumni has the highest weighting, at 20 per cent. Local salaries are converted to US dollars using purchasing power parity rates (PPP) supplied by the IMF. The salaries of full-time students are removed. Salaries are normalised by removing the very highest and lowest salaries reported.
Salary increase is the second most important criterion, with a weighting of 10 per cent. It is based on the average difference in alumni salary between their first MiM-level job after completing the course and their current salary, three years after completion. Half of the weight is applied to the absolute salary increase and the other half is applied to the relative percentage increase.
Where available, information collected over the past three years is used for alumni criteria. Responses from 2022 carry 50 per cent of the total weight and those from 2021 and 2020 each account for 25 per cent. Excluding salary-related criteria, if only two years of data are available, the weighting is split 60:40 if data are from 2022 and 2021, or 70:30 if from 2022 and 2020. For salary figures, the weighting is 50:50 for two years’ data, to negate inflation-related distortions.
Data provided by schools are used to measure the diversity of teaching staff, board members and students according to gender and nationality and the international reach of the programme. For gender criteria, schools with a 50:50 (male: female) composition receive the highest score.
When calculating international diversity, in addition to the percentage of international students and faculty at a school — the figures published — the FT also considers the proportion of international students and faculty by citizenship.
A score is then calculated for each school. First, Z-scores — formulas that reflect the range of scores between the top and bottom school — are calculated for each ranking criterion. These scores are then weighted and added together to give a final score. Schools are ranked according to these scores, creating the FT Masters in Management ranking of 2022.
After discounting the schools that did not meet the response rate threshold from the alumni survey, a first version is calculated using all remaining schools. The school at the bottom is removed and a second version is calculated, and so on until the final ranking is reached.
Other information in the table — programme length, the number of students enrolled, overall satisfaction and the percentage of students who undertake internships — does not contribute towards the ranking. (See the key to the ranking below.)
Judith Pizer of Pizer-MacMillan acted as the FT’s database consultant.
Key: weights for ranking criteria are shown in brackets as percentage.
Salary today US$: average salary three years after completion (not used in the ranking calculation), US$ PPP equivalent (purchasing power parity. See methodology at ft.com/mim-method) †*
Weighted salary US$ (20): average graduate salary three years after completion, adjustment for salary variations between sectors, US$ PPP equivalent. †*
Salary percentage increase (10): average difference in alumni salary between completion and today. Half of this figure is calculated according to the absolute increase and half according to the relative percentage increase. †*
Value for money rank (5): calculated according to alumni salaries today, tuition and other costs. †*
Career progress rank (6): calculated according to changes in the level of seniority and the size of the organisation alumni are working for between completion and today. †*
Aims achieved % (5): the extent to which alumni fulfilled their goals for doing a masters. †*
Careers service (5): effectiveness of the careers service in supporting student recruitment, rated by alumni. †*
Employed at three months % (5): percentage of the most recent completing class that found employment within three months of completing their course. Figure in brackets is the percentage of the class for which the school was able to provide data. §
Female faculty % (5): percentage of female faculty on April 1. ‡
Female students % (5): percentage of women on the masters programme on March 31. ‡
Women on board % (1): percentage of women on the school advisory board. ‡
International faculty % (5): calculated according to the diversity of faculty (on April 1) by citizenship and the percentage whose citizenship differs from their country of employment — the figure published in the table.
International students % (5): calculated according to the diversity of current MiM students by citizenship and the percentage whose citizenship differs from the country in which they study — the figure in the table.
International board % (1): percentage of the school board whose citizenship differs from the school’s home country.
International work mobility rank (8): calculated according to changes in the country of employment of alumni between completion and today. Alumni citizenship is taken into account. †*
International course experience rank (8): calculated according to whether the most recent completing masters class carried out exchanges and internships, lasting at least a month, in countries other than where the school is based. In-person, virtual and hybrid experiences are included. Due to travel restrictions caused by the pandemic, some schools were unable to provide recent data for this category or alumni were unable to take up overseas study and work opportunities. This means the ranks for this category may not be a true reflection of the overseas opportunities that schools can offer. If you are a prospective student, please contact the school to check if they offer study trips and internships abroad. §
Faculty with doctorates % (6): percentage of faculty with doctoral degrees as of April 1.
The categories below are for information only and are not used in the ranking calculations.
Average course length (months): average completion length of the masters programme.
Number enrolled 2021-22: number of students who enrolled in the first year of the masters programme in the past year.
Overall satisfaction: average evaluation by alumni of the masters course, scored out of 10. After alumni answered various questions about their masters experience, including the quality of the school’s careers service, they were asked to rate their overall satisfaction, on a 10-point scale.
Internships (%): the percentage of the last completing class that undertook internships as part of the programme. §
† Includes data for the current and one or two preceding years where available.
‡ For all gender-related criteria, schools with a 50:50 (male/female) composition receive the highest score.
* Data from alumni who completed their programmes in 2019 included.
§ Completed MiM between March 1, 2021 and February 28, 2022.
Top 25 schools
Here are some quick facts about the top schools in the ranking. By Sam Stephens
Ranked 1
St Gallen is top for an unprecedented 12th consecutive year. The Swiss school’s alumni boast the second highest average salary at $138,091.
Ranked 3
Rotterdam School of Management is top for graduates who changed their country of employment between completing the programme and today.
Ranked 4
Stockholm School of Economics is one of 53 schools where 100 per cent of alumni undertook an internship during their programme.
Ranked 5
Of the top 25, France’s ESCP has the highest proportion of graduates who spent at least a month overseas on an internship and/or exchange.
Ranked 7
London Business School, Esade and Imperial have the most international students in the top 25, at 96 per cent.
Ranked 9
France’s EMLyon is one of 14 schools to achieve gender balance for their most recent MiM class.
Ranked 11
Alumni of China’s Tsinghua were the most contented cohort, with an alumni satisfaction score of 9.81 out of 10.
Ranked 12
Russia’s IBS-Moscow Ranepa is the highest new entrant. Alumni had the second highest salary increase within three years, at 106 per cent.
Ranked 15
Portugal’s Nova ranks highest of the top 25 for career progress, based on increases in seniority in the three years since completing the MiM.
Ranked 18
All recent alumni of Shanghai Jiao Tong: Antai found work within three months, a feat achieved by only six other schools.
Ranked 21
Alumni of Russia’s St Petersburg saw the highest percentage salary increase, at 112 per cent within three years.
Criteria for taking part in the ranking
Updated on March 2, 2023
We review the criteria on a regular basis. The pandemic has affected business schools and our ranking process, but we have done our best to accommodate feedback from schools. Please note, we are unable to include requests from every school.
The FT MiM ranking is based on two surveys: one of the business school and one of the alumni who completed their MiM three years ago.
Each school can only submit one standalone programme. However, more than one programme can be submitted if the additional programme is a joint degree. Joint programmes can be separately entered, on the condition they are structured so that participating students take classes from all partner institutions in the programme.
The following are the criteria schools must meet in order to participate in the annual MiM ranking:
The business school must be accredited by AACSB or Equis, or have an affiliation with an AACSB or Equis accredited organisation.
The full-time MiM programme must have been running continuously for the past four years and the first class should have graduated in the calendar year at least three years prior to the survey date.
Your programme must be a generalist programme in general management. We will not consider specialised programmes (such as Masters in Marketing or a Masters in Finance with a management element).
This ranking is directed at Masters in Management degrees for students with very little or no prior work experience.
At least 30 full-time students must have completed the programme, per year, for the past three years.
Students must matriculate and graduate in cohort(s).
The business school must have a minimum of 20 full-time permanent faculty.
The MiM programme can be delivered in several languages but it must be fully available in English. Graduates need to complete the survey in English.
Ideally, business schools should be able to supply the email addresses of all its alumni who completed their programme three years ago. These will be used purely for editorial research purposes and held securely and destroyed after use, unless they agree for us to contact them again for future research, respecting GDPR and the FT rankings privacy policy: https://bschoolportal-ft-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/privacy-policy. Please exclude those who want to opt out of our survey. Please do not select and lobby alumni to complete the survey.
We require a response rate of at least 20 per cent from alumni with a minimum of 20 completed surveys from any school wishing to be considered for the ranking. For example, a class size of 100 graduates will require 20 completed surveys and a class size of 200 alumni will require 40 completed surveys. This response rate is based on the total size of the cohort we are surveying, not the number of graduate emails schools are able to supply, as we are aware that some alumni will opt out of the survey.
Meeting these criteria does not guarantee automatic participation in the ranking. The final decision rests with the Financial Times.
Please note, the table is finalised about eight weeks before the publication date. It is too late for schools to withdraw from the ranking after the eight-week mark.
Email mim@ft.com by the start of February if you have questions or wish to take part as the ranking process starts in early March. By this time, the onus is on schools to get in contact with us if they wish to take part in the ranking, as we are unable to email every school to check if they wish to be considered.
Rankings: https://rankings-ft-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/home/masters-in-management
Report: https://www-ft-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/mim
Methodology: https://www-ft-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/mim-method
Timings
Invitation to participate: March
Schools to confirm participation: March
Schools to upload alumni list: April
Survey open: April
Survey close: May
Data checks with schools: May – August
Publication: September
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