How do Part-Time MBA Rankings Work?

If you’re shopping for part-time MBA programs, you should know how the ranking you’re reading actually works, because it’s nothing like shopping for a full-time MBA.

Half the US News part-time MBA ranking comes from a single survey question sent to business school deans. Another quarter is how many part-time students a school enrolls. And career outcomes (employment rates, salary data) aren’t in the formula at all, even though US News collects that data and publishes it right there on each school’s profile page.

For how all the MBA rankings fit together, start with our overview.

Which Rankings Even Cover Part-Time Programs?

In practice, it’s mostly US News. The Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, and the Poets & Quants composite all cover full-time programs only. Fortune also publishes a part-time MBA ranking, though it gets far less attention than the US News list. If you’ve been reading those lists and trying to find where the part-time programs are, that’s why you’re not able to find them.

So if you’re planning on doing a part-time MBA, you’re pretty much solely reliant on one publication’s ranking system to get the lay of the land. A sample size of one is never ideal, so let’s break down what goes into that ranking system, and how to evaluate different programs for yourself.

How the US News Part-Time Ranking Works

To be included, a program needs AACSB accreditation, at least 10 enrolled part-time MBA students, and at least one entering class from fall 2023 or fall 2024. US News covers in-person, hybrid, and flexible programs; predominantly online degrees get routed to a separate ranking. 233 programs qualified for the 2026 edition, out of 245 that were invited to take part.

Unlike the full-time list, there’s no unranked category. If a school didn’t participate in the survey or didn’t report qualifying data, it simply doesn’t appear.

Six indicators feed the formula:

Peer assessment contributes an eye-catching 50% of the total score. What even is peer assessment, you ask? Basically, deans and directors at other schools get to rate their competitor schools on a scale of 1 to 5. Two people get surveyed at each school, and then the highest and lowest ratings get trimmed off before the rest of the survey results are averaged.

The response rate for these surveys isn’t great, at just above 55%. When you take into account that a survey only 55% of people answered dictates half of how the score is calculated, we’re already starting on shaky ground with this ranking system.

Moving down the list, two measures come in at 12.5% each: what share of the business school’s enrollment is part-time, and the raw part-time headcount. US News says the pairing makes sense because a high ratio is more impressive at scale than when it comes from having almost no full-time students.

Selectivity makes up the last quarter of the scale.

Why This Ranking Is Shaky

There are three glaring problems with this ranking system:

Alumni Outcome Data Exists, But Isn’t Used 

This year, US News gathered employment data from part-time programs, but didn’t use it. While there may be a host of reasons for it, it still exposes a disparity in how full-time and part-time programs are ranked. While career outcomes contribute to 50% of the weight of a full-time program’s ranking, they contribute 0% to the part-time rankings. 

You could argue that most part-time programs serve the needs of working professionals, so outcomes may not be necessary to measure. Our counterargument – if you’re considering a part-time program, it’s very sensible to want to know whether your investment in the degree will pay off in some way, shape or form. Unfortunately, this ranking list can’t tell you about that at all, because it didn’t use any data pertaining to actual outcomes for part-time program students.

Half the Score Is Calculated Off of “Vibes”

Part-time programs serve working professionals in a commuting radius. They don’t recruit nationally or produce a visible cohort. There’s just a lot less to know about them from the outside than there is about a full-time program.

So when you ask deans at other schools to rate them on a five-point scale, you’re asking for opinions about things that are hard to observe. And, honestly? 50% is an enormous weight to give that. When half a formula is reputation, reputation is most of what the formula returns.

Bigger Is Better, Apparently

A quarter of the ranking is enrollment size. Size isn’t nothing; a larger program probably means more course sections, more scheduling flexibility, and a bigger network, all of which matter when you’re fitting a degree around a job. But headcount doesn’t necessarily equal quality, and 25% of a weighting scale is a lot to attribute to that.

All said and done though, none of this means that this ranking is useless. It’s a reasonable read on which part-time programs other business schools respect and which ones have built real scale, and those two factors aren’t nothing.

But notice what you actually have, once you peek behind the curtain on how the US News methodology works: a vague notion of reputation, a measurement of class size, and not much about what the program can do for you. So treat the ranking as a very rough estimate of where schools land – from there, you can dive in and do your own research.

What Actually Matters When You’re Comparing Part-Time Programs

Your own research pays far more dividends than any ranking can. Here’s what we recommend doing to determine if a program is a good fit for you:

Get an understanding if a program actually fits your life. Since you’re considering a part-time program, there are quite a few factors you’ll need to make decisions on. Evening, weekend, or hybrid? How many years will it take to complete? These are all things no ranking can measure.

Get in touch with the school itself. Since there’s relatively little information out there for part-time programs, your best shot will be to get in touch with your target programs and get your information straight from the source. Admissions offices want you to come to their school, so they’re usually very forthcoming and lovely to interact with.

Ask whether part-time students get the same access. Get an understanding of the difference between a part-time and a full-time program at a school. Do they have the same faculty? The same career services? The same recruiting events, or are they separated out? Programs vary greatly in this regard, and these aspects of a program can reflect on the quality you’re getting in your education.

Understand whether the admissions requirements are practical. Not everyone has room in their life to take a standardized exam, write essays, and jump through all the hoops that a top part-time program might ask of you. Many part-time programs accept the Executive Assessment, a shorter exam for working professionals, but some may still ask for GMAT scores. Find out what’s practically within your means and go from there.