2026 OMBA Ranking: Acceptance Rates At The Top Online MBA Programs

Graduates of University of Texas at Dallas’ Naveen Jindal School of Management’s online MBA celebrate after the ceremony. Courtesy photo

At Poets&Quants, we believe the quality of the cohort makes for a better learning environment for all students, and the more evaluation candidates are subjected to on the front end, the better the class experience at the back.

That’s why we count Admission Standards as a full one-third of a school’s final score in our annual ranking of the best online MBA Programs in the United States. 

A significant chunk of a school’s Admissions score – 15 out of a possible 100 points – comes from its acceptance rate: That is the percentage of applicants who actually end up getting in. While we lowered the metric five points from two years ago, we still consider it to be an important factor in a program’s rigor. (See the full methodology for the 2026 ranking here.)

HARDEST & EASIEST OMBAs TO GET INTO

As we do every year in our annual OMBA ranking, we asked schools to report their acceptance rates for all intakes during the most recent academic year. So, that would be the 2024-2025 academic year for our 2026 ranking.

Not surprising that some of the most selective schools were also some of the most highly ranked programs overall.

Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, which earned its fourth No. 1 finish in our OMBA ranking for 2026, had the most selective program, accepting 23% of applicants. That’s five percentage points lower than the Kelley Direct Online MBA accepted for 2025.

Jack Welch Management Institute (ranked No. 9 overall) was the second most selective with a 34% acceptance rate. That’s up seven percentage points from the 27% it admitted for 2025’s ranking. University of Texas at Dallas Naveen Jindal School of Management (No. 2 overall) and University of Michigan Ross School of Business (No. 3) each accepted 49% of applicants.

The tables below show the online MBA programs for our latest ranking with the lowest and highest acceptance rates. The lower the rate, the harder it is for students to get accepted into the program.

On the other end of the spectrum, Ohio University accepted all eligible applicants, the highest rate in the ranking. Seven other programs accepted 95% or more of applicants, including Hofstra University Zarb School of Business which ranked No. 5 overall.  

Fifteen programs had acceptance rates of 90% or more, while another 17 schools accepted 80% or more of applicants.

ARE ONLINE MBAs GETTING LESS SELECTIVE?

At the start of the pandemic, many schools loosened their admission standards to help mitigate looming uncertainties in the economy, job outlook, and student enrollment.

In hindsight, it wasn’t all that surprising. It was uncharted territory; nobody knew what was coming. As a result, acceptance rates rose en masse in full-time MBA programs from the 2019 and 2020 intakes as schools adapted to the changes. Acceptance rates for online programs, already considerably higher than their full-time counterparts, followed suit.

What is somewhat surprising is that, nearly five years on, admission rates have not bounced back. According to data reported for our 2026 ranking, the average acceptance rate of ranked programs is still nearly 7% higher than it was before the pandemic.

For our 2020 OMBA ranking, Poets&Quants asked online MBA programs to submit acceptance rates for its 2019-2020 academic year, with data covering mainly fall 2019 – a few months before the pandemic really started shutting things down. The average rate among the ranked programs that year was 70.63%. That average rose to 73% for our 2021 ranking (using intake data from fall 2020 onward.)

That means this year’s average acceptance rate of 77.28% is 6.65% higher than before the pandemic. In other words, online MBA programs are, on average, easier to get into – at least among schools that we rank. There are certainly caveats to the comparison. We ranked 61 schools for 2026 compared to 35 for 2020, making a direct comparison imprecise.

If you consider averages for the top 10 ranked programs for 2026, average acceptance rate is more in line with expectations. In fact, average acceptance rate for this year’s top 10 is actually 6.6% lower than those same schools accepted in 2019-2020.

Thirteen of the 61 schools in our 2025 ranking – and for which we had data – reported lower acceptance rates compared to five years ago, meaning it was harder for candidates to get an invitation to enroll. However, 25 schools have higher acceptance rates than before the pandemic. (Schools that were not ranked in 2020 are not included in this count because the data isn’t readily available.)

ADMISSION RATES DROPPED AT 30 SCHOOLS FROM LAST YEAR

Year over year, acceptance rates at 30 schools from our ranking dropped this year compared to last. They fell 7% or more at eight of those schools.

Three schools had acceptance rates fall by 15% year over year: Clemson University (No. 28 overall), University of Washington Foster School of Business (No. 4), and Drexel University LeBow College of Business (No. 54). Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business (No. 6) posted an 11% drop. 

Twenty three schools reported higher acceptance rates for 2026, compared to 15 in 2025 and 27 schools in 2024.  

The table below shows how acceptance rates have changed at all 61 ranked schools over the last six years.

DON’T MISS OUR FULL 2026 ONLINE MBA RANKING PACKAGE

• The Best Online MBA Programs In The U.S. For 2026

• The Methodology Behind P&Q’s 2026 Online MBA Ranking

• How Online MBA 2025 Graduates Rated The Degree’s Career Impact

• How Online MBA 2025 Graduates Rated Their Program’s Learning Experience

• Acceptance Rates At The Top Online MBA Programs

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