Booth, Kellogg, Ross — and the supply-chain superpowers behind them. The Midwest's MBA bench is deeper than the coasts admit.
1
Chicago, Illinois · Private
The flexible curriculum is real — no required core beyond one course — and the consulting placement engine is arguably the best in the country.
2
Evanston, Illinois · Private
Still the standard-bearer for marketing and general management, with the most collaborative culture of the M7.
3
Ann Arbor, Michigan · Public
The highest-ranked public program, and our reigning value pick among the elite. MAP consulting projects put every student on a live client engagement.
Two of the M7 and the best public program in the country anchor a region coastal applicants chronically underrate. Beneath Booth, Kellogg, and Ross sits real specialty depth: Broad and Smeal trading supply-chain crowns, Carlson serving sixteen Fortune 500 headquarters, Fisher embedded in Columbus’s quiet boom, Mendoza’s network compounding out of South Bend.
The region’s economics stay friendly — Kelley and Wisconsin under $85,000 in-state, Gies rewriting the price floor entirely at $24,000 online — and the EV-era industrial rebuild keeps operations hiring strong. The winters are the winters. The payback math forgives them.
Bloomington, Indiana · Public · Class size 175
Kelley Direct tops the U.S. News online ranking again at $94,944 — no asterisk on the diploma — while the Bloomington MBA quietly over-places its sticker price.
Notre Dame, Indiana · Private · Class size 120
The Notre Dame network's loyalty is a business asset you can borrow for two years — and Mendoza's ethics-first framing turned prescient once ESG grew teeth.
St. Louis, Missouri · Private · Class size 110
Olin sends its entire class abroad in the first 18 months, runs a WashU–Fudan EMBA that just topped the Financial Times global table, and places a 110-person class with boutique attention.
Columbus, Ohio · Public · Class size 100
Columbus quietly became a headquarters town — and Fisher's tiny MBA class gets first call on it. U.S. News's eight-spot drop to No. 32 reads harsher than the outcomes.
Minneapolis, Minnesota · Public · Class size 90
Target, Best Buy, General Mills, 3M, UnitedHealth — the Twin Cities headquarters economy hires Carlson's 90-person class before national recruiters get a look.
Madison, Wisconsin · Public · Class size 85
Wisconsin admits students into named career specializations with dedicated centers — the brand-management track has fed Midwest consumer giants for generations.
East Lansing, Michigan · Public · Class size 70
Broad trades the top two spots of U.S. News's supply-chain specialty ranking with Penn State and ASU yearly, and the auto industry's reinvention keeps its graduates employed.
West Lafayette, Indiana · Public · Class size 70
Rebuilt and renamed with a $100M+ gift, Daniels pairs STEM-designated business degrees with Purdue's engineering halo at one of the lowest stickers in the Big Ten.
Champaign, Illinois · Public · Class size 4000
Gies shut its residential MBA in 2019 to bet everything on the $24,000 iMBA — now one of the largest and most disruptive graduate business programs on earth.
Iowa City, Iowa · Public · Class size 50
Tippie shrank its full-time program to protect quality and doubled down on working-professional formats; what remains is small, cheap, and employed.
Cleveland, Ohio · Private · Class size 45
Weatherhead's healthcare management lane runs on University Circle adjacency, and its appreciative-inquiry tradition gave management consulting one of its standard tools.
Cincinnati, Ohio · Public · Class size 45
Procter & Gamble's hometown school supplies the consumer-goods industry with marketers, and the co-op tradition Cincinnati invented keeps everyone employed.
Lawrence, Kansas · Public · Class size 35
KU jumped 21 spots to No. 51 in the 2026 U.S. News table — the year's largest rise — on outcomes the Kansas City metro has been buying all along.
| # | School | BP Score | Tuition | Avg. GMAT | Acceptance | Median salary | Placed 3 mo. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chicago Booth School of Business | 95.9 | $173,340 | 729 | 16.5% | $170,000 | 96.2% |
| 2 | Kellogg School of Management | 94.6 | $170,298 | 731 | 21.1% | $165,000 | 94.6% |
| 3 | Michigan Ross School of Business | 91.2 | $148,000 | 722 | 24.7% | $160,000 | 95.8% |
| 4 | Indiana Kelley School of Business | 85.6 | $110,000 | 685 | 38% | $140,000 | 88% |
| 5 | Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business | 82 | $130,000 | 680 | 38% | $140,000 | 87% |
| 6 | WashU Olin Business School | 82.7 | $135,000 | 700 | 35% | $140,000 | 87% |
| 7 | Ohio State Fisher College of Business | 81.8 | $110,000 | 680 | 40% | $130,000 | 86% |
| 8 | Minnesota Carlson School of Management | 81.5 | $115,000 | 680 | 42% | $135,000 | 88% |
| 9 | Wisconsin School of Business | 80.9 | $100,000 | 670 | 38% | $125,000 | 86% |
| 10 | Michigan State Broad College of Business | 78.8 | $95,000 | 660 | 40% | $122,000 | 87% |
Every figure comes from each school's employment report prepared under the MBA CSEA standard, which is independently audited. Where a school declines to report, we mark it unranked for that pillar rather than estimating.
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Fully rebuilt each June when audited employment reports land, with a mid-cycle data refresh in January.
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