Top Feeders to Business School (MBA Programs)

Updated December 2022

High schoolers who desire to be among the next generation of corporate leaders know that they may one day wish to get an MBA from one of the nation’s elite business schools like Wharton (Penn), Stern (NYU), or Harvard Business School. These future CEOs, CFOs, and entrepreneurs should be aware that certain undergraduate colleges serve as “feeders,” annually sending a sizable number of graduates to the crème de la crème of graduate business school programs. Being aware of which colleges have a direct pipeline into the graduate business program you aim to one day attend, can help put you on the path to making that dream a reality.

The two lists that follow showcase the top 30 “feeder” schools into the most highly-ranked MBA programs. On the first list, for each school, we look at the raw number of students who go on to attend elite MBA programs, as well as the two MBA programs enrolling the most graduates from that undergraduate school. The second list looks at the top 30 producers when adjusted for a school’s undergraduate enrollment, which allows us to highlight schools that may be smaller in size, but that still send a consistent flow of graduates to the world’s premier graduate business programs.

In order to identify "top feeder” colleges, we relied on publicly available data from LinkedIn, a professional networking site featuring profiles of approximately 170 million workers across the United States. Specifically, we identified and analyzed the undergraduate backgrounds of more than 100,000 MBA students who enrolled at ten of America's most reputable MBA programs, including Columbia Business School, Harvard Business School, MIT’s Sloan School of Management, NYU’s Stern School of Business, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, Stanford Graduate School of Business, UChicago’s Booth School of Business, The Wharton School (Penn), UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, and the Yale School of Management.

Top Feeder Rankings (by total graduates enrolled)

Top Feeder Rankings (adjusted for undergraduate enrollment)

Does institutional selectivity matter?

When applying to business school, yes, it appears that institutional selectivity does in fact play a role. In our sample, of the students who went on to enroll at America’s best MBA programs, approximately 54% graduated from colleges categorized as “Most Selective” or “Extremely Selective.” However, 27% of elite business school students in our sample did graduate from schools indicated as minimally selective or non-selective, suggesting that attendance at a highly selective undergraduate college or university isn't a prerequisite to earning a top-flight MBA. Click here to see how we group colleges by selectivity.