The people have spoken and the Inner Circle MBA Business School World Series for 2024, originally slated for cancellation, will now go ahead. It begins on Tuesday next week.
At 51 votes the poll is probably best described as the whisper heard around the world, but the result was clear: 39 of the 51 voted for a 2024 competition.
There are no changes to the rules and divisions since last year. The top 48 schools in the FT full time MBA rankings for 2024 in the six set regions (UK, Europe, Northeastern US, Central and Southern US, Western US, and Asia) are divided into two leagues (the Inner League and the Circle League) and will battle it out over the course of 19 polls to decide the champion.
The regular season consists of 12 one-week polls as each division of four schools goes head-to-head. The winner of each poll will go through to their Division Series, along with the top two second-placed schools which received the most votes across all regions in their league who are awarded wildcards. The top two of each of the four subsequent three-day Division Series polls then go through to the Championship Series, which consists of two three-day polls, the winner of which goes through to the Inner Circle MBA World Series for 2024, a three-day, winner takes all poll to decide the most popular business school in the world.
There are a few changes to this year’s lineup. We welcome two new first-time qualifiers – University of Georgia - Terry College of Business and Emory University - Goizueta Business School – who both join the Circle Leage Central and Southern US division. We also welcome Georgetown University McDonough School of Business to the competition after they were cruelly pipped at the post by the unranked Wharton for the final place in the 2023 competition. And we welcome Guanghua School of Management, Peking University back to the fold after a one-year absence; they rejoin the competition in the Circle League Asia division.
The qualifiers for 2024 are:
Inner League
UK
London Business School
Cambridge Judge
Alliance Manchester Business School
Bayes
Europe
INSEAD
IESE
Esade
ESCP
Northeastern US
Wharton
MIT Sloan
Harvard Business School
Yale SOM
Central and Southern US
Northwestern Kellogg
Duke Fuqua
Georgetown McDonough
Rice Jones
Western US
UCLA Anderson
Stanford GSB
USC Marshall
Arizona State Carey
Asia
CEIBS
Fudan School of Management
Indian School of Business
HKUST
Circle League
UK
Oxford Saïd
Imperial College Business School
Warwick
Durham
Europe
SDA Bocconi
HEC Paris
IE
IMD
Northeastern US
Columbia Business School
Cornell Johnson
Dartmouth Tuck
NYU Stern
Central and Southern US
Chicago Booth
UVA Darden
UGA Terry
Emory Goizueta
Western US
Berkeley Haas
UW Foster
UCI Paul Merage
BYU Marriott
Asia
Shanghai University of Finance and Economics
NUS
Nanyang
Peking Guanghua
The regular season starts on Tuesday 3 September. Make sure you follow Inner Circle MBA so that you don’t miss a single poll.
May the best school win!!