Best Online MBA Programs In U.S.

Best Online MBA Programs in usa
These are the best online master's degree programs in business administration, based on factors such as admissions selectivity, reputation for excellence among peer institutions and academic and career support services offered to studentsWhat are the best online MBA programs?

A few years ago, hardly anyone bothered to even rank the digital versions of a school’s MBA. But as distance learning has become increasingly popular, several major publications known for their lists of on-campus degree programs have gotten into the act.

U.S. News & World Report, which debuted an online MBA ranking in 2013, now provides numerical ranks for 172 programs, from No. 1 Indiana University to No. 169 University of North Alabama in Florence (four schools were tied at a rank of 169).

Not to be outdone, The Financial Times rushed into the rankings game in 2014 with a global list of 15 programs that had IE Business School in Spain at the top, followed by Warwick Business School in Britain, Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School in Boston, the University of Florida and Indiana. 

The Economist also has ranked online programs in the past, though its last special report on distance learning is somewhat dated, having come out in 2010. Instead of providing numerical rankings for each of the 16 programs evaluated, the British magazine instead chose to rate the programs excellent, good, average or poor. Only two schools’ programs were deemed “excellent” at the time: the University of Florida and IE Business School in Spain. Another three schools were rated “good.” They are the programs at Thunderbird Global School of Management, Indiana University’s Kelley School, and Euro MBA, a consortium of European business schools.

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The problem with all these rankings–along with their often significantly flawed methodologies–is that they are so new that many schools have declined to participate in them. The result: The relatively new lists fail to show the full array of business schools now offering online MBAs, including some of the very best schools.

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Potential students also will find a large number of websites that purport to rank the best online options, but almost all of them are little more than “link farms” that collect a royalty or click payment when someone seeks more information on one of the listed programs. Any website that ranks online programs but fails to provide detailed explanations of the methodology with specific back-up data for each school is pretty much worthless. Be extremely wary of these fake rankings which often attempt to mix for-profit schools with legitimate academic institutions.

Rank	School	Faculty Credentials and Training	Student Services and Technology	Student Engagement	Admissions Selectivity
#1Tie	Indiana University—​Bloomington (Kelley)  Bloomington, IN	90	58	82	86
#1Tie	Temple University (Fox)  Philadelphia, PA	95	66	97	95
#1Tie	University of North Carolina—​Chapel Hill (Kenan-​Flagler)  Chapel Hill, NC	73	58	100	75
#4Tie	Arizona State University (Carey)  Tempe, AZ	80	62	92	77
#4Tie	University of Florida (Hough)  Gainesville, FL	84	59	85	84
#6	University of Texas—​Dallas  Richardson, TX	84	71	72	92
#7Tie	Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper)  Pittsburgh, PA	77	62	53	75
#7Tie	Pennsylvania State University—​World Campus  University Park, PA	99	62	93	60
#9	North Carolina State University (Jenkins)  Raleigh, NC	82	71	88	71
#10Tie	Auburn University  Auburn, AL	88	58	77	68
#10Tie	University of Wisconsin—​Eau Claire  Eau Claire, WI	95	51	88	69
#12Tie	Arkansas State University—​Jonesboro  State University, AR	100	68	95	73
#12Tie	James Madison University  Harrisonburg, VA	83	43	98	61
#12Tie	Lehigh University  Bethlehem, PA	83	66	73	74
#12Tie	University of Massachusetts—​Amherst (Isenberg)  Amherst, MA	78	71	80	55
#16Tie	Ball State University (Miller)  Muncie, IN	93	76	80	69
#16Tie	University of Mississippi  University, MS	84	58	78	68
#18Tie	Georgia Southern University  Statesboro, GA	92	59	87	62
#18Tie	Mississippi State University  Mississippi State, MS	82	66	66	71
#18Tie	University of Tennessee—​Martin  Martin, TN	87	61	92	67
#21Tie	Thunderbird School of Global Management  Glendale, AZ	75	51	85	52
#21Tie	University of Nebraska—​Lincoln  Lincoln, NE	87	50	69	66
#21Tie	Washington State University  Pullman, WA	93	51	85	54
#24	Pepperdine University (Graziadio)  Malibu, CA	87	59	62	51
#25Tie	Central Michigan University  Mount Pleasant, MI	83	91	77	54