The FT ranks HEC Paris as the world's best Master in Finance ranking, the prestigious Grande Ecole has led in all but one of the years that the ranking has been released. HEC Paris is followed by fellow French business schools ESCP, Skema, ESSEC, and EDHEC.
The FT’s list of the best Masters in Finance is largely populated with European schools, who make up eight of the top 10. China’s Tsinghua University School of Management and MIT Sloan School of Management are the sole representatives of Asia and the US in the FT ranking.
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Financial Times Master in Finance Ranking: French dominance explained
The Financial Times Master in Finance ranking places heavy weighting on graduate earnings. Average alumni salaries after three years make up 20% of a school’s overall score, while the percentage increase between pre and post study comprises 10%.
This benefits HEC Paris: the school’s average alumni salary of $172k+ ranks third globally, while its salary percentage increase is over 23% higher than any other school.
Other career-focused elements including the percentage of grads who are employed after three months, career progress rank, career services rank, and the amount of alumni who achieve their aims, also contribute highly to a school’s score.
The top-ranking French schools perform well in these categories. ESCP ranks first for career services and aims achieved; EDHEC takes third for career progress; and ESSEC places fourth for aims achieved. The overall top-five were also among a number of schools who saw 100% of job-seeking grads gain employment within three months of graduation.
The FT places similarly high emphasis on international opportunities. That includes international work mobility, which analyses the countries that students live and work in before and after their course. It also includes an international course experience ranking based on the number of students who complete international exchanges and internships while studying.
ESCP ranked top for both international criteria, while Skema ranked second for international course experience and HEC Paris took third for international work mobility. All of the top five schools ranked among the top 10 for both international factors.
FT Masters in Finance ranking: World’s Best Masters in Finance
Rounding out the top-10 programs in the FT Master in Finance Ranking are the UK’s University of Oxford: Said Business School in sixth, Tsinghua in seventh—rising five places since 2021—and Spain’s IE Business School in eighth. Fellow UK-based London Business School ties in ninth place with MIT Sloan, who opted out of the ranking last year.
Moving beyond the top 10: Portugal’s Nova School of Business and Economics rises three places to 11th, while the UK’s Warwick Business School, places 12th.
SDA Bocconi and University of St Gallen—the top-ranked business schools in Italy and Switzerland—both ranked sixth in 2021 but fall substantially this year with Bocconi placing 13th and St Gallen in 14th.
Germany’s WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management ranks 15th while Imperial College Business School is in 16th after falling five places compared with last year.
The remaining four spaces are taken up by Catolica Lisbon School of Business and Economics, ESADE Business School in Spain, Peking University: Guanghua School of Management, and Stockholm School of Economics.
Across the top 20 programs, France has five schools; the UK has four; China, Portugal, and Spain have two; while Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, and the US have one.
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