Foster #1 in job placement of top 30 schools – U.S. News ranking

Ranking #1 in the Northwest and #27 of 377 business schools nationwide, Foster’s Full-time MBA Program led the top 30 schools in job placement in U.S. News & World Report’s Best Business Schools Full-time MBA ranking.

Foster’s nationally reputed Evening MBA Program ranked #1 in the Northwest and #18 of 301 schools in the U.S. The Foster School was also recognized among the country’s best in Entrepreneurship (#18) and Accounting (#21).

In a year when MBA hiring was so strong that 23 of the top 30 business schools reported higher than 90% job placement, the Foster School achieved the highest placement rate in that top tier: 98%. Foster MBA graduates’ average salary and bonus increased nearly $15,000 this year to $133,299—surpassing higher ranked schools, such as Northwestern (Kellogg), Georgetown (McDonough), University of Southern California (Marshall), and University of North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler). The majority of Foster MBA graduates accepted positions in technology, consulting, healthcare, and financial services, with 75% receiving a signing bonus averaging more than $28,000.

“The U.S. News business school rankings are formulated from a controversial mix of subjective ratings by business school deans and a small sampling of MBA recruiters combined with hard data on admissions and career outcomes,” said Assistant Dean for Master’s Programs, Dan Poston.  “In terms of the hard data, Foster had its best overall performance in the history of this ranking. For someone who believes more in numbers than opinion, that pleases me.”

U.S. News Best Business Schools rankings methodology includes both opinion and results measures, with deans and MBA program directors opinion contributing the largest weight to the score at 25% and recruiter opinion contributing 15%. The largest weighted result measure is average GMAT and GRE score at 16.25%, followed by mean salary and bonus at 14%, employment 3 months after graduation at 14%, mean undergraduate GPA at 7.5%, employment at graduation at 7%, and acceptance rate at 1.25%.

High job placement and recruiter satisfaction scores lifted the Foster Full-time MBA Program into the top 20 elite U.S. schools in Bloomberg Businessweek’s Best Business Schools Ranking, the Economist’s Which MBA international ranking and The Financial Times Global MBA ranking.

In addition to high salaries and rewarding careers, Foster MBAs saw strong ROI with low average debt levels. While average debt can exceed $120,000 in several MBA programs, Foster graduates carried an average debt of only $32,047.

To allow MBA candidates to compare programs based on the rankings measures that matter most to them, Foster created the Best-fit Rankings Calculator. MBA applicants can try the Rankings Calculator and see how business schools compare on job placement, average salary, employer opinion, ROI, low average debt and more using data licensed from U.S. News & World Report, Businessweek, The Financial Times, and Forbes.

Learn more about Foster’s current rankings.

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