20 top MBA programs whose grads land jobs right out of school

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Our sixth annual ranking of the 50 best business schools in the world evaluated MBA programs based on reputation, average starting salary after graduation, job-placement rate within three months of graduation, average GMAT score, and tuition and fees. (Read our full methodology here.)

Because business school is such a hefty investment, the ability to get a job soon after graduating is an important factor in choosing where to go.

To come up with our list of the 20 top business schools for getting a job right away, we broke out the schools by job-placement rate. Some schools that ranked highly on our main list didn’t make this ranking because of lower job-placement figures, such as Harvard (91%) and Stanford (86%).

It’s worth noting though that many students at these schools decide to start their own businesses — an employment result that schools don’t factor into their overall job-placement statistic.

Keep scrolling to see the best business schools for finding a job after graduating, listed here in ascending order by job-placement percentage.

Columbia University — Columbia Business School
Location: New York, New York

Job-placement rate: 93%

Students begin crafting their network and community within the business world the minute they arrive at Columbia, thanks in part to the school’s cluster system, which places first-year students in “clusters” of 65 to 70 people who take all their core classes together. Columbia also counts some of the greatest minds in finance among its alumni, including Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett and former Bank of America executive Sallie Krawcheck.

University of London — London Business School (LBS)
Location: London, England

Job-placement rate: 93%

University of London’s business school is once again the best outside the US. With 75% of the top-500 global companies based in London, the school is a recruiting and networking gold mine for a host of multinational corporations, including Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey & Co.

In addition to earning an MBA, students are required to graduate with a second-language proficiency in one of 15 languages offered by the Modern Language Centre at King’s College London.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology — Sloan School of Management
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Job-placement rate: 93%

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is not only the best college in America, but it’s also home to one of the best business schools. The Sloan School of Management, which celebrated its 100-year anniversary last year, offers three MBA tracks: enterprise management, entrepreneurship and innovation, and finance.

Sloan reported that 2014 graduates accepted job offers at companies like Adobe, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, and 7.4% of grads went on to start their own businesses.

University of Navarra — IESE Business School
Location: Madrid, Spain

Job-placement rate: 93%

A degree from IESE Business School makes a noticeable difference in graduates’ earning potential. The average starting salary before entering the program is $45,000, but that number rises to $93,000 for grads, according to the school.

And with IESE’s bilingual program, students can become fluent Spanish speakers through the multilingual campus environment and intensive classes and by experiencing daily life in Spain.

University of Notre Dame — Mendoza College of Business
Location: Notre Dame, Indiana

Job-placement rate: 93%

Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business has one of the largest alumni networks in the world, putting students in touch with a wide variety of networking opportunities and business connections. The MBA program’s “interim intensive” pairs students with executives at well-known corporations to shadow and help solve real business problems. Mendoza also has a one-year accelerated MBA program for exceptional students who have an undergraduate degree in business or relevant work experience.

Emory University — Goizueta Business School
Location: Atlanta, Georgia

Job-placement rate: 94%

Goizueta Business School is named after Roberto C. Goizueta, the late CEO of Coca-Cola who led the company from 1981 until he died in 1997. The school, which was founded in 1919 and started offering an MBA in 1954, took Goizueta’s name in 1994, and his business philosophy is now a central part of the school’s mission: To develop professionals who will add value to their companies by changing the way business is done.

Duke University — Fuqua School of Business
Location: Durham, North Carolina

Job-placement rate: 94%

Ninety-four percent of full-time MBA students at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business land jobs within three months of graduation. The top-five recruiters from the school are Deloitte, Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Co., Microsoft, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Deloitte alone hired 50 MBA students during the 2013-2014 academic year for jobs and internships. Fuqua also offers a number of joint MBA programs, including JD/MBA, MD/MBA, and MPP/MBA.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — College of Business
Location: Urbana-Champaign, Illinois

Job-placement rate: 94%

While the first year of the MBA program at the College of Business at Illinois focuses on fundamentals and coursework, the second year can be customized with courses inside and outside the school, allowing each student to plot their course to pursue their ideal career.

An Illinois MBA is particularly prestigious for those looking to go into consulting. The school’s global-consulting program provides students experience with emerging markets and an international business network.

Indiana University — Kelley School of Business
Location: Bloomington, Indiana

Job-placement rate: 94%

Indiana’s Kelley School of Business not only provides students with a rigorous academic curriculum, but it also builds leadership-development opportunities, such as student clubs and peer-coaching, into each semester so students can grow their soft skills.

Kelley touts itself as the largest business-school alumni network in the world and has a 94% job-placement rate within three months of graduation. Top employers include Google, JPMorgan Chase, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Amazon, and PepsiCo.

University of North Carolina — Kenan-Flagler Business School
Location: Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Job-placement rate: 94%

The Kenan-Flagler Business School complements its core curriculum with a wide variety of experiential learning opportunities in business, finance, and beyond. The school is particularly valuable for those looking to gain experience in the nonprofit sector.

Kenan-Flagler’s Nonprofit Board Fellows Program places MBA students on nonprofit boards of directors for six months, where they gain exposure to high-level strategy and leadership opportunities. In the past, students have worked with Habitat for Humanity, Our Children’s Place, and the Environmental Education Fund.

Northwestern University — Kellogg School of Management
Location: Evanston, Illinois

Job-placement rate: 94%

Northwestern’s business school was established in the early 1900s, but it wasn’t until 1979 that the school took the Kellogg name following a $10 million donation from the John L. and Helen Kellogg Foundation — heirs of the family that started the famed cereal company.

The school emphasizes international experience. Its International Growth Lab pairs its students with those at ESADE in Barcelona and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology to develop strategies for solving an international business’ real-world problems. Kellogg also offers an accelerated, one-year MBA degree for top students who already have a business background.

Texas A&M — Mays Business School
Location: College Station, Texas

Job-placement rate: 94%

Mays Business School took its name in 1996 — 35 years after its founding — when Lowry Mays, founder and former CEO of Clear Channel Communications, gave a $15 million endowment to the school. At just $57,316 in tuition and fees for the 16-month full-time MBA program, it’s a sound investment for students, who on average make nearly twice that figure after graduating.

Projects like the MBA Venture Challenge, in which students evaluate startup firms’ commercial viability, ready them for careers in tech. Forty percent of grads who accepted jobs in 2015 went into the technology industry.

Dartmouth College — Tuck School of Business
Location: Hanover, New Hampshire

Job-placement rate: 95%

After their first year in the program, a full 100% of Tuck’s class of 2016 gained hands-on experience through summer internships.

Many of the students who had accepted job offers within three months of graduation did so at big-name companies, including Bain & Co., Goldman Sachs, Samsung, Deloitte, and Barclays Capital.

University of Pennsylvania — The Wharton School
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Job-placement rate: 95%

The Wharton School earned our top ranking in 2015 for all-around excellence, but its job-placement rate puts it at No. 6 in terms of the best business schools for getting a job. Wharton’s stellar reputation and high average starting salary make it a worthwhile investment; only Stanford’s students scored higher on the GMAT.

The first business school in the US, Wharton was established in 1881 from a $100,000 donation by industrial tycoon Joseph Wharton. The institute now boasts one of the largest alumni networks among b-schools, including notable figures like John Sculley of Pepsi and Apple, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, and billionaire financier Ron Perelman.

University of Virginia — Darden School of Business
Location: Charlottesville, Virginia

Job-placement rate: 95%

The Darden School of Business offers one of the top MBA entrepreneurship programs among b-schools, awarding over $1 million in scholarships annually and offering highly specialized training like Venture Capital Bootcamp, a three-day workshop focused on early-stage investing. Thirty-three percent of Darden graduates find work at consulting firms like Bain & Co. and A.T. Kearney.

Georgia Tech — Scheller College of Business
Location: Atlanta, Georgia

Job-placement rate: 96%

Given Georgia Tech’s broader focus, it may not be the first place one looks for an MBA, but its Scheller College of Business provides a well-rounded business education applicable to a variety of industries, not just tech.

Still, the public university uses its tech focus to give students a leg up with a more modern and relevant business education that keeps pace with the way technology is changing and influencing business. In 2015, 35% of graduates went into consulting and 22% landed jobs in tech.

University of Washington — Foster School of Business
Location: Seattle, Washington

Job-placement rate: 96%

University of Washington MBA students are mentored by some of Seattle’s leading business talent, who foster an out-of-classroom learning experience for the students. Companies that frequently hire students out of the Foster School of Business include Seattle natives Amazon and Starbucks, as well as Johnson & Johnson, McKinsey & Co., and Northwestern Mutual, among others.

University of Warwick — Warwick Business School
Location: Coventry, England

Job-placement rate: 97%

The University of Warwick’s business school offers a 12-month MBA program for students with a global-business mind-set that includes an intensive schedule of core and elective modules, a consultancy project, and optional studies abroad. Warwick’s top-recruiting companies include Amazon, American Express, Citibank, and Goldman Sachs.

Washington University in St. Louis — Olin Business School
Location: St. Louis, Missouri

Job-placement rate: 97%

Approximately 29% of 2014 graduates from Washington University’s Olin Business School went on to jobs in financial services — about the same percentage as consumer products (15%) and tech (14%) combined. Olin emphasizes experiential learning catered to students in four key areas: corporate consulting, nonprofit consulting, global studies, and entrepreneurship.

University of Chicago — Booth School of Business
Location: Chicago, Illinois

Job-placement rate: 98%

The Booth School of Business all but guarantees a coveted job: 98% of students from the 2015 class had secured employment within three months of graduation — the highest percentage of any school — and the top-five employers were McKinsey & Co., Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Co., Amazon, and Bank of America.

Booth’s full-time MBA program focuses on training students for real-world business scenarios through experiential learning and lab courses where students work with actual early-stage startups. The school also brings in guest lecturers from private-equity and venture-capital companies, and some Booth students intern with the companies and help them evaluate new market and business opportunities.