Poets&Quants’ Ranking Of The Best Online MBA Programs Of 2026

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University of Washington’s Foster School of Business Hybrid MBA students gather this fall for one of its in-person immersions.

ADMISSION STANDARDS

Admission Standards are used to measure the quality of incoming students. In any quality MBA program, students often learn as much from their classmates as they do from their professors.

Like the other categories, Admission Standards accounts for one third of the overall ranking score. Data is reported by the schools through our institutional survey.

Indiana Kelley consistently has some of the smartest online MBAs on the ranking, topping the category for three straight years before slipping one measly spot on 2025’s ranking. It’s back where it belongs for 2026. Last year’s category topper, Bryant University (No. 19 overall) fell second for Admissions.

To calculate this category, we considered average undergraduate GPA, average years of work experience, acceptance rate, adjusted average admission test scores, 6-year graduation rate, and 1-year retention weight.

Below is the Admissions Standards rank (accounting for 33% of the overall rank) for all 61 schools.

Admissions Standards
Admissions Rank
School
Admissions Total
2026 Rank
1 Indiana University (Kelley) 100.0 1
2 Bryant University 96.9 19
3 University of Texas at Dallas (Jindal) 96.4 2
4 University of Washington (Foster) 95.4 4
5 Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper) 88.8 6
6 University of Michigan (Ross) 88.8 3
7 Fairfield University (Dolan) 82.7 17
8 Auburn University (Harbert) 82.6 7
9 University of Houston (Bauer) 82.3 58
10 Jack Welch Management Institute 82.1 9
11 Villanova University 82.0 15
12 Texas Tech University (Rawls) 81.5 30
13 University of Cincinnati (Lindner) 81.1 31
14 University of Massachusetts at Amherst (Isenberg) 79.8 21
15 University of North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler) 79.2 12
16 University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business 77.8 8
17 Case Western Reserve University (Weatherhead) 76.3 11
18 University of Massachusetts Lowell (Manning) 76.2 46
19 Clemson University 75.5 28
20 University of Florida (Warrington) 75.0 10
21 Hofstra University (Zarb) 74.6 5
22 University of Wisconsin MBA Consortium 73.2 18
23 University of Nebraska-Lincoln 71.6 33
24 University of Iowa (Tippie) 71.2 26
25 Creighton University (Heider) 69.1 50
26 Pepperdine University (Graziadio) 69.1 35
27 University of South Florida (Muma) 68.0 27
28 Bowling Green State University (Schmidthorst) 68.0 23
29 University of Delaware (Lerner) 67.5 32
30 University of Utah (Eccles) 67.4 13
31 University of Missouri (Trulaske) 67.4 55
32 North Carolina State University (Poole) 66.4 22
33 San Jose State University (Lucas) 65.5 40
34 Rogers State University 63.7 44
35 Seattle University (Albers) 63.6 57
36 Rice University (Jones) 63.2 20
37 George Mason University (Costello) 63.2 56
38 Lehigh University 63.0 16
39 Kennesaw State University (Coles) 62.7 60
40 Longwood University 62.0 42
41 University of Connecticut 60.9 25
42 Wake Forest University 60.7 14
43 Santa Clara University (Leavey) 60.0 24
44 University of Michigan-Dearborn 59.9 39
45 Temple University (Fox) 59.6 52
46 University of California-Davis 59.1 47
47 University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (Rollins) 58.7 59
48 Baylor University (Hankamer) 58.1 34
49 SUNY Oswego 55.6 53
50 University of North Texas (Ryan) 55.3 61
51 University of Maryland (Smith) 54.1 36
52 Southern Methodist University (Cox) 54.1 45
53 William & Mary (Mason) 53.7 38
54 Louisiana State University (Ourso) 53.5 49
55 University of Denver (Daniels) 52.3 29
56 Florida International University 51.3 51
57 Drexel University (LeBow) 50.2 54
58 Syracuse University (Whitman) 47.6 37
59 Ohio University 43.4 43
60 MIssissippi State University 38.6 48
61 American University (Kogod) 29.0 41

Full Ranking Results:

PAGE 4: Full Ranking: The Best Online MBA Programs of 2026
PAGE 5: How Schools Ranked on Admissions Standards
PAGE 6: How Schools Ranked on Career Impact
PAGE 7: How Schools Ranked on Academic Experience