Best MBA for working in Asia

Local schools, local careers

Asian business schools place almost all of their graduates in Asia, and most of those in their own country or city. That is why the upper rows of the table are schools based in the region: IIM Ahmedabad PGPX, SMU, CEIBS, HKU, CUHK and others. Their classes are drawn largely from the region, their employers are local conglomerates, banks and technology groups as well as international firms, and their alumni sit in the companies a graduate will approach. The ranking uses the share of the class placed in Asia alone: few schools give a salary by region, and the few salaries they give are not comparable across currencies.

12 of the ranked schools have no salary in the table, because they publish none, publish one in a form we cannot compare, or send less than half the class to Asia so that the school-wide salary cannot stand in. IIM Ahmedabad PGPX (₹3,216,250), HEC Paris ($82,825), LBS (£68,417), Oxford Saïd (£40,399) and Columbia ($95,976) publish a salary for their Asian hires specifically.

Western schools with an Asian line

Cambridge Judge (35%), Warwick (27.4%), HEC Paris (25%), INSEAD (23%), EDHEC (21%), Alliance MBS (18%), IESE (15%), IMD (15%), LBS (14%), Oxford Saïd (12%), Columbia (7%) and Queen's Smith (6%) are the schools outside Asia that place at least 5% of their class there. Programs with a campus in the region, a large share of Asian students or a one-year format that draws mid-career professionals planning to go home tend to score highest in this group. Columbia is the only American school in the table. Below the threshold, Yale SOM (4.8%), Cornell Johnson (4%), Kellogg (3.8%) and UCLA Anderson (3.3%) come closest. An American MBA can still lead to Asia, mostly for graduates who return to their home country, but the reports show it as a small minority of each class.

Currency is not purchasing power

Salaries in rupees, yuan or Hong Kong dollars are converted to US dollars at the European Central Bank rate of the build. IIM Ahmedabad PGPX reports ₹3,258,750, about $33,756 at that rate. Market rates do not equalize living standards: the same amount usually goes further in an Indian or Chinese city than in Singapore or Hong Kong, and further there than in New York. That is one more reason the Asia ranking ignores salary. The payback of a local program for a local candidate should be computed in local terms, with a current salary in the same currency; the converter below and the calculators of this site work for one person at a time.

A fee or a salary in US dollars

Amount

CurrencyEURGBPCHFCNYINRSGDHKDCADAUDKRW

In US dollars

$111,880

1 EUR

$1.119

ECB reference rate of October 13, 2026. Prices on the ground do not follow exchange rates one for one.

See every school in dollars →

Schools that publish too little

Several Asian schools publish a strong placement record without a salary or without a student living budget, which keeps them out of the cost and return rankings on other pages. Here they still rank, because the Asia share is all we need. 17 schools report an Asia line under 5% of the class and are listed apart; 16 of them are American. The school pages show what each report contains and what it leaves out.

What the share does not say

An Asia line covers economies as different as China, India, Japan and Singapore. Work permits are national and depend on the employer, the salary and the nationality of the graduate; a Singapore school's share says nothing about a foreigner's chance in Shanghai. Hiring cycles differ too: local groups and international firms do not recruit on the same calendar, and a slow year in one economy lowers the share of the schools that depend on it. Use the table to find the schools that feed the region, then compare two of them with the comparison tool and read their employer lists.