Participation in the ranking is voluntary and at the business school’s request. EMBA programmes must meet certain criteria to be eligible. First, the school must be accredited by either the US’s Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, or Europe’s Equis. The EMBA must also be cohort-based, with students enrolling and completing their studies together. The ranking consists of the following 15 indicators:

Salary today (20%) - average alumnus salary three years after completion, US$ PPP equivalent.

Salary increase (20%) - average difference in alumni salaries between before the EMBA and now. Half of this figure is calculated according to the absolute salary increase, and half according to the percentage increase relative to the pre-EMBA salary – the figure published in the table.

Career progress (6%) - calculated according to changes in the level of seniority and the size of company alumni work in now, versus before their EMBA.

Work experience (5%) - a measure of the pre-EMBA experience of alumni according to the seniority of positions held, number of years in each position, organisation size and overseas work experience.

Aims achieved (5%) - the extent to which alumni fulfilled their goals or reasons for doing an EMBA.

Female faculty (4%) - percentage of female faculty.

Female students (4%) - percentage of female students on the program.

Women on board (1%) - percentage of female members of the advisory board.

International faculty (5%) - calculated according to the diversity of faculty by citizenship and the percentage whose citizenship differs from their location of employment – the published figure.

International students (5%) - the percentage of current EMBA students whose citizenship differs from the location in which they study, or where the school’s main campus is located, as well as their diversity by citizenship.

International board (2%) - percentage of the board whose citizenship differs from the location in which the business school is situated.

International course experience (5%) - based on percentage of classroom teaching hours that were conducted outside the location in which the business school is situated. In-person and virtual experiences are included. 

Faculty with doctorates (5%) - percentage of full-time faculty with a doctoral degree.

FT research rank (10%) - calculated according to the number of articles published by a school’s current full-time faculty members in 50 academic and practitioner journals between January 2019 and around May 2022. The rank combines the absolute number of publications with the number weighted relative to the faculty’s size.

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) rank (3%) - proportion of core courses dedicated to ethical, social and environmental issues for the current and recent completing class. Due to the pandemic, some schools do not have a current class, therefore data was taken from their recent completing class only.

For all gender-related criteria, schools with a 50:50 (male/female) composition receive the highest score.