Best friends sitting in restaurant for dinner and making a toast with white wine. On table is food.
As rankings drop like autumn leaves, the danger mounts that applicants may get seduced by “the dinner party rankings.” These are the short list of schools that give accepted students bragging rights at the next social gathering.
Some schools on that list are perennials. Announcing that you have been accepted to Harvard, Stanford, or Wharton is always good for a champagne toast.
But the dinner party rankings can be surprisingly regional. For example, the University of St. Gallen is arguably the most prestigious business school in the German-speaking world, though it might be largely unrecognizable at a party in Boston.
On the other hand, Dartmouth is not a household name in many European circles. Despite this, the distinguished Tuck School of Business is a member of the Super 10 group of business schools and Dartmouth is one of the eight Ivy League universities.
A BIG NAME DOESN’T ALWAYS GUARANTEE RECOGNITION
Similarly, the honor of being accepted at the University of Chicago may require a bit of explaining. I once recommended this school, with its formidable strengths in quantitative analysis, to a brilliant European student. His mother hesitated because of the metropolitan-sounding name and asked, “Isn’t that a local college?”
The same problem plagues the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League university. Prospective students look at me blankly until I explain that it’s the home of Wharton, as well as, for undergraduates, the distinguished Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business.
“Oh,” they say, suddenly impressed. “Wharton.”
UPenn and UChicago are not state schools, but the University of Virginia, the University of Michigan, and the University of North Carolina are. This is where things may get complicated for students using the Poets & Quants rankings of undergraduate business programs. Applicants outside the United States, and even some domestic applicants, may not know that the flagship campuses of these state universities are often considered comparable in quality to the Ivy League. They are also home to undergraduate business programs ranked in the top 10 by Poets & Quants.
So go ahead and brag that you are headed to North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School!
Marlena Corcoran
FACTOR IN REGIONAL RECOGNITION & INDUSTRY STRENGTHS
We can make sense of all this by remembering that dinner party guests are likely to know and favor schools that are important in their neighborhood – or in the region where an applicant would like to work after graduation. If you are creating a list of schools, this is a key point to remember: Regional employers know regional schools and may even favor them as pipelines for talent.
Sometimes the attraction of a desirable region is compounded by the importance of certain industries in that region. An applicant who feels drawn to the vibrant culture and relative affordability of Nashville, Tennessee might also aspire to work in the healthcare capital of the U.S. They might well throw a party to celebrate getting accepted to Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management. In 2025, 14% of Owen grads went into healthcare. Over the past six years, almost 50% of Owen MBAs who accepted positions in the healthcare industry reported their location as Nashville.
I recently spoke with Candy Lee LaBalle, President of the Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants (AIGAC) and founder of mbaClarity in Madrid. Years of experience has shown LaBalle that if Europeans don’t get into a U.S. school that has a strong brand in Europe, they’d rather choose a European school. That’s because a top name and a strong alumni network in their target region is critical for their career, LaBalle maintains.
They may study in the U.S., but as LaBalle says, “Europeans come home.”
SAME DINNER, DIFFERENT TASTES
The highest-ranked schools are not every dinner party guest’s goal. Even an internationally prominent school like the Indian School of Business, which broke into the top 5 in the LinkedIn global rankings for 2026, is not the top choice for every Indian family.
“We are a land of many Indias,” Niketa Desai, founder of Admit Beacon in Bengaluru and member of the Board of AIGAC, wrote to me on WhatsApp. “So whether ISB becomes dinner-party status depends on what dinner party you are going to, what your prior background is, etc.”
In other words, there is no one dinner party for all 1.5 billion people of India.
So go beyond the names that will win instant recognition – even envy – at your next dinner party. Your list should be composed of schools that will offer the specific education you need for the career, the industry, the location, and the life to which you aspire.
Dr. Marlena Corcoran is the founder of Athena Mentor: International University Admissions Counseling, and a contributor to Forbes in the area of international business education. Her new book, Year by Year to College: For IB and International Students, is available on Amazon. It contains further advice on selecting and competing for admission to the right schools for you, whether or not they appear on anyone else’s dinner party rankings.
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