One of the main reasons that IESE does so well is the quality of its careers placement. IESE graduates can expect an average salary of around US$142,000 when they leave the programme, with 96% of graduates finding a job within three months.

The University College Dublin - Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business gets a 52nd place ranking. 

IESE Business School was founded in 1958 in Barcelona, as the graduate business school of the University of Navarra. Initially, the school offered an array of executive education programs for managers, at a time when the concept of executive education was scarcely known outside of the United States. The establishment of these programs, aimed mainly at experienced business leaders, constituted a landmark in the history of executive education in Europe. Since then, more than 15,000 CEOs, presidents, owners and general managers of leading corporations have taken part in such programs.

Despite this European success, the ranking once again underlines the dominance of US schools. Eight of the top ten schools are American. Kellogg, which had topped the ranking for three consecutive years, drops to second, with Dartmouth, Stanford and Chicago all featuring prominently.

Bill Ridgers, the editor of Which MBA?, commented: "The main things that set these schools apart are a robust programme and excellent faculty. They often also possess a strong collegiate sense, meaning that students are keen to evangelise about their schools."

The highest ranked school in Asia and Australasia (excluding INSEAD, which has campuses in both France and Singapore) is the University of Hong Kong, in 45th place.

Ratings by category
US schools generally do particularly well in the "open new career opportunities" category. This is partly because careers services in the US are often more lavishly funded, better organised and more professionally set up than in the rest of the world. At Chicago, for example, 90% of students find a job within three months of graduating and students rate the school's careers services at 4.6 out of 5-higher than any other school.

US schools also dominate the personal development and educational experience category. US institutions invest heavily in their faculty. It is not unusual to find that everyone teaching on a top US programme has a PhD; this is the case at UCLA or MIT, for example. They are also choosy about the students they admit. Out of ten schools with average GMAT scores (a pre-programme intelligence test) over 700, only one, INSEAD, is outside the US.

Where European schools decidedly have the edge on their US counterparts is in the salaries of their graduates. At Ashridge in the UK, for example, graduates can on average expect to earn over US$200,000 a year; at Henley the average is US$172,000 and at IESE it is US$142,000. In total 24 schools boast average graduate salaries of over US$100,000, and all but two are European-Dartmouth and Stanford being the exceptions. Although some of this can be can be explained by the strength of European currencies against the dollar, it is particularly a reflection of the strong jobs market in the UK and Spain, especially in the financial services sector.

European schools, which often have more international alumni, also score well on their potential for "networking".

Top 10 programmes by category

The ranking's distinctive features and methodology
Over the past 17 years, the Economist Intelligence Unit has regularly surveyed MBA students about why they take an MBA. Four factors consistently emerge:

• to open new career opportunities and/or further current career;
• personal development and educational experience;
• to increase salary;
• the potential to network.

These factors are the basis for the ranking. The Economist Intelligence Unit ranks full-time MBA programmes on their ability to deliver these elements to students. It weights each element according to the average importance given to it by students surveyed over the past five years.

The Economist Intelligence Unit ranking differs from other rankings in several important areas. It is:

• More student-centric. It measures the way schools meet the demands students have of an MBA programme.
• All-embracing. It is based on detailed questionnaires completed by business schools and around 20,000 current MBA students and graduates around the world. Key numerical data (such as average GMAT scores) are combined with subjective views from students and graduates (such as their assessment of a business school's faculty).
• Global. It allows direct comparison of MBA programmes around the world.
• Regional. It compares MBA programmes in three regions: North America, Europe, and Asia and Australasia.
• Flexible. Programmes may be ranked in many ways, producing, for example, tables of the top ten US or Asian and Australasian schools by GMAT score or the top ten US and European school by percentage of foreign students. This facility is available at www.which-mba.com.

To qualify for inclusion in the Economist Intelligence Unit rankings, the schools with full-time MBA programmes that responded to our survey had to meet various thresholds of data provision, as well as attaining a minimum number of responses to a survey gauging the opinion of current students and alumni who graduated within the last three years. These were set as a proportion of the annual intake of students to the programme.

Data were collected during spring 2005 using two web-based questionnaires, one for business schools and one for students and recent graduates. Schools distributed the web address of the latter questionnaire to their own students and graduates. A total of 18,266 students and graduates participated. All data received from schools were subject to verification checks, including, where possible, comparison with historical data, peer schools and other published sources. Student and graduate questionnaires were audited for multiple or false entries.

Memory has been built into the rankings by taking a weighted average of 2005 (50%), 2004 (30%) and 2003 (20%) data to provide a rounded picture of the school. Sudden movements in data, which might not produce an immediate increase in quality, are thus reflected gradually, much as the improvement would affect students.

The table below summarises the measures used to calculate the rankings together with their respective weightings. Student and alumni ratings make up 20% of the total ranking, and 80% is based on data provided by schools. The statistical methodology adopted for the ranking gives each business school a unique score (known to statisticians as a z-score). Unlike some other rankings, the Economist Intelligence Unit does not include any "equal" schools (for example, four schools ranked equal sixth followed by one ranked tenth). However, it should be noted that differences between some schools might be very slight.