A Michigan Ross online MBA student presents to Subaru during her team’s MAP Project. Courtesy photo
Who better to judge the quality of an online MBA that the students who actually went through it?
That’s why alumni feedback remains a cornerstone of Poets&Quants’ annual ranking of the Best Online MBA Programs in the U.S. 2026’s ranking is no different.
Two of the ranking’s three methodological categories are based entirely on alumni survey responses. Those categories — Academic Experience and Career Outcomes — draw on feedback from thousands of the most recent graduates at ranked schools. Alumni are asked everything from whether they would recommend their online MBA to others to how accessible and responsive their instructors were. We also probe how well the program supported their career goals, both during the program and immediately after graduation.
Taken together, these surveys give a clearer, unfiltered view of what programs are delivering on their promises and where others may be falling short, straight from the people who experienced them firsthand.
For the 2026 ranking, we surveyed alumni from the Class of 2025, defined as students who graduated between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025. Surveys were sent to 7,957 eligible alumni at 61 ranked programs, with 1,325 responses returned. That’s a 16.7% response rate.
As in past years, alumni answered more than a dozen questions about their academic experience, including their ability to connect with faculty and classmates and how quickly they could apply what they learned in their coursework to real-world situations.
On the following pages, you’ll see how Class of 2025 alumni from each school rated their programs across these key dimensions. Click through each page, or jump directly to a category below:
- PAGE 2: WOULD RECOMMEND
- PAGE 3: FORMAT & FLEXIBILITY
- PAGE 4: QUALITY OF PROFESSORS
- PAGE 5: EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
- PAGE 6: APPLYING LESSONS AT WORK
- PAGE 7: MAKING CONNECTIONS