Top Feeders to Business School – MBA Programs
High schoolers who desire to be among the next generation of corporate leaders know that they may one day wish to get an MBA from one of the nation’s elite business schools like Wharton (Penn), Stern (NYU), or Harvard Business School.
These future CEOs, CFOs, and entrepreneurs should be aware that certain undergraduate colleges serve as “feeders,” annually sending a sizable number of graduates to the crème de la crème of graduate business school programs. Being aware of which colleges have a direct pipeline into the graduate business program you aim to one day attend, can help put you on the path to making that dream a reality.
The two lists that follow showcase the top 30 “feeder” schools into the most highly-ranked MBA programs. On the first list, for each school, we look at the raw number of students who go on to attend elite MBA programs, as well as the two MBA programs enrolling the most graduates from that undergraduate school. The second list looks at the top 30 producers when adjusted for a school’s undergraduate enrollment, which allows us to highlight schools that may be smaller in size, but that still send a consistent flow of graduates to the world’s premier graduate business programs.
In order to identify “top feeder” colleges, we relied on publicly available data from LinkedIn, a professional networking site featuring profiles of approximately 170 million workers across the United States. Specifically, we identified and analyzed the undergraduate backgrounds of more than 100,000 MBA students who enrolled at ten of America’s most reputable MBA programs, including Columbia Business School, Harvard Business School, MIT’s Sloan School of Management, NYU’s Stern School of Business, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, Stanford Graduate School of Business, UChicago’s Booth School of Business, The Wharton School (Penn), UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, and the Yale School of Management.
Updated December 2022
| Rank (Total) | Institution | #MBA Graduates | Top Business School (#1) | Top Business School (#2) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Harvard University | 3789 | Harvard Business School | Stanford Graduate School of Business |
| 2 | Stanford University | 3231 | Stanford Graduate School of Business | Harvard Business School |
| 3 | University of California, Berkeley | 3037 | UC Berkeley Haas School of Business | The Wharton School |
| 4 | Northwestern University | 2865 | Northwestern Kellogg School of Management | University of Chicago Booth School of Business |
| 5 | New York University | 2720 | NYU Stern School of Business | The Wharton School |
| 6 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | 2718 | University of Chicago Booth School of Business | Northwestern Kellogg School of Management |
| 7 | University of Pennsylvania | 2567 | The Wharton School | Harvard Business School |
| 8 | Cornell University | 2503 | The Wharton School | Harvard Business School |
| 9 | Yale University | 2297 | Harvard Business School | The Wharton School |
| 10 | Princeton University | 2211 | Harvard Business School | The Wharton School |
| 11 | University of Michigan | 2079 | Northwestern Kellogg School of Management | University of Chicago Booth School of Business |
| 12 | Duke University | 1812 | The Wharton School | Harvard Business School |
| 13 | Dartmouth College | 1807 | Harvard Business School | The Wharton School |
| 14 | University of Notre Dame | 1624 | Northwestern Kellogg School of Management | University of Chicago Booth School of Business |
| 15 | Brown University | 1473 | Harvard Business School | The Wharton School |
| 16 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 1402 | Harvard Business School | MIT Sloan School of Management |
| 17 | University of Chicago | 1388 | University of Chicago Booth School of Business | Northwestern Kellogg School of Management |
| 18 | University of Virginia | 1379 | The Wharton School | Harvard Business School |
| 19 | Georgetown University | 1244 | The Wharton School | Northwestern Kellogg School of Management |
| 20 | University of California, Los Angeles | 1235 | UC Berkeley Haas School of Business | The Wharton School |
| 21 | University of Wisconsin-Madison | 1028 | Northwestern Kellogg School of Management | University of Chicago Booth School of Business |
| 22 | University of Texas at Austin | 1004 | Harvard Business School | Northwestern Kellogg School of Management |
| 23 | Purdue University | 919 | University of Chicago Booth School of Business | Northwestern Kellogg School of Management |
| 24 | Boston College | 884 | Northwestern Kellogg School of Management | Harvard Business School |
| 25 | Tufts University | 878 | The Wharton School | Harvard Business School |
| 26 | University of Southern California | 838 | The Wharton School | Northwestern Kellogg School of Management |
| 27 | Columbia University | 820 | The Wharton School | Harvard Business School |
| 28 | Washington University in St. Louis | 754 | Northwestern Kellogg School of Management | University of Chicago Booth School of Business |
| 29 | United States Naval Academy | 749 | Harvard Business School | The Wharton School |
| 30 | Penn State University | 722 | The Wharton School | NYU Stern School of Business |
Top Feeder Rankings (adjusted for undergraduate enrollment)
| Rank (Adjusted) | Institution | #MBA Graduates | Top Business School (#1) | Top Business School (#2) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dartmouth College | 70 | UC Berkeley Haas School of Business | Stanford Graduate School of Business |
| 2 | University of Chicago | 86 | University of Chicago Booth School of Business | The Wharton School |
| 3 | Claremont McKenna College | 17 | Stanford Graduate School of Business | The Wharton School |
| 4 | Yale University | 75 | Stanford Graduate School of Business | Yale School of Management |
| 5 | Williams College | 24 | Stanford Graduate School of Business | Yale School of Management |
| 6 | Harvard University | 106 | Stanford Graduate School of Business | Harvard Business School |
| 7 | Northwestern University | 87 | UC Berkeley Haas School of Business | Northwestern Kellogg School of Management |
| 8 | Stanford University | 71 | Stanford Graduate School of Business | Harvard Business School |
| 9 | Duke University | 65 | MIT Sloan School of Management | Harvard Business School |
| 10 | Amherst College | 17 | Stanford Graduate School of Business | NYU Stern School of Business |
| 11 | Middlebury College | 22 | The Wharton School | Columbia Business School |
| 12 | Brown University | 60 | Yale School of Management | Stanford Graduate School of Business |
| 13 | Princeton University | 46 | The Wharton School | Northwestern Kellogg School of Management |
| 14 | Wellesley College | 19 | Harvard Business School | Yale School of Management |
| 15 | University of Pennsylvania | 86 | The Wharton School | Stanford Graduate School of Business |
| 16 | Colgate University | 21 | Northwestern Kellogg School of Management | NYU Stern School of Business |
| 17 | Swarthmore College | 11 | University of Chicago Booth School of Business | The Wharton School |
| 18 | Rice University | 27 | Harvard Business School | Northwestern Kellogg School of Management |
| 19 | Bowdoin College | 12 | Yale School of Management | Stanford Graduate School of Business |
| 20 | Cornell University | 98 | MIT Sloan School of Management | Yale School of Management |
| 21 | Georgetown University | 48 | University of Chicago Booth School of Business | The Wharton School |
| 22 | Pomona College | 10 | Stanford Graduate School of Business | UC Berkeley Haas School of Business |
| 23 | Vanderbilt University | 43 | Columbia Business School | Northwestern Kellogg School of Management |
| 24 | University of Notre Dame | 53 | Northwestern Kellogg School of Management | Yale School of Management |
| 25 | Tufts University | 34 | Yale School of Management | Northwestern Kellogg School of Management |
| 26 | Wesleyan University | 18 | The Wharton School | NYU Stern School of Business |
| 27 | Columbia University | 48 | Columbia Business School | The Wharton School |
| 28 | Colby College | 11 | UC Berkeley Haas School of Business | Yale School of Management |
| 29 | Washington and Lee University | 10 | Stanford Graduate School of Business | Columbia Business School |
| 30 | Bates College | 10 | UC Berkeley Haas School of Business | MIT Sloan School of Management |
Does institutional selectivity matter?
When applying to business school, yes, it appears that institutional selectivity does in fact play a role. In our sample, of the students who went on to enroll at America’s best MBA programs, approximately 54% graduated from colleges categorized as “Most Selective” or “Extremely Selective.” However, 27% of elite business school students in our sample did graduate from schools indicated as minimally selective or non-selective, suggesting that attendance at a highly selective undergraduate college or university isn’t a prerequisite to earning a top-flight MBA. Click here to see how we group colleges by selectivity.
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