MBA

London Business School’s MBA is the school’s flagship post-experience degree and, on LBS’s own statement of the result, #4 in the world in the Financial Times MBA ranking.¹ It is a separate programme from the Masters in Management and the Masters in Analytics and Management this site profiles: those are pre-experience degrees, and this one admits a class averaging 5.5 years of work.

Overview

The MBA is nominally two years but is built around flexible exit points at 15, 18 or 21 months, chosen by the student — with one constraint, that anyone taking the International Exchange cannot leave at 15.¹ The intake is in August, at the Regent’s Park campus in London.

Year One is business fundamentals plus 15 tailored core courses. Year Two opens into more than 100 electives, a Global Experience and an optional International Exchange.¹

Class Profile

The incoming MBA2027 class is 514 students, 44% women, drawn from 66 nationalities — among the largest and most international MBA cohorts in Europe.⁴

LBS publishes no average age for that class. Its MBA2024 employment report, the most recent to carry a full profile, describes a different one: 502 students, average age 28, 94% international, 37% female, 74 nationalities, and six years of average work experience across a 2-to-13-year range.⁶ Those are two distinct classes three years apart and are best read as such — the female share alone moved from 37% to 44% between them.

Application & Deadlines

A GMAT or GRE is required, and LBS is unusually direct about the bar. The class average is around 645, the typical range 555 to 805, and the school says the minimum it will usually accept is around 555; on the GRE it looks for over 160 in both sections. Scores must be less than five years old.³

An English test is required unless English is your first language and you have always been a citizen of and primarily resident in a majority English-speaking country. LBS accepts IELTS, TOEFL, Cambridge CPE or CAE, PTE Academic and Duolingo, and publishes no minimum score for any of them.³

The requirement that shapes the class more than the test is experience: 5.5 years on average, with no hard floor, though LBS states that fewer than three years needs “superior academic credentials”.³ ⁴

The file is three essays (500, 200 and an optional 500 words), a one-page CV, a professional reference, transcripts and the tests, with a £200 application fee — waived for LBS alumni and active military candidates.³ Shortlisted applicants interview with alumni or senior admissions staff in their own region.

⚠ On dates, be careful. LBS runs three rounds a year and does not publish them on its apply page, pointing to a separate Application Calendar instead — so this profile carries no dated round rather than restating one it cannot verify. Deadlines fall at 17:00 UK time, and “applications for the August 2027 intake will open later in August 2026”, so that cycle was open when this was researched on 9 September 2026.³ Check LBS’s Application Calendar, and see every European school’s confirmed MiM rounds on our interactive deadlines timeline (it tracks the Master in Management, not this programme).

Tuition, Scholarships & Funding

⚠ The published price is a year behind the class being recruited. LBS lists £123,950 and labels it the 2026 intake; applications open now are for August 2027, and no 2027 rate has been published.² Treat £123,950 as a floor, not a quote.

It covers the full programme whatever exit point you take — core courses, electives and experiential learning — and excludes programme-related travel, which matters on a degree whose Global Experience destinations differ in cost, along with living costs in London.²

Both fees are non-refundable and deducted from tuition.² Admitted students are automatically considered for LBS’s internal awards; the school describes “a growing portfolio of scholarships” and names the Laidlaw Women’s Leadership Fund, but publishes no individual scholarship values on this page, so none are stated here.

Career Outcomes

The headline numbers come from two different graduating classes, and it is worth separating them.

The most recent employment data is the Class of 2025: 86% accepted an offer within three months of graduation, 88% received one, on a 98% reporting rate.⁵

The most recent salary data is a year older — the Class of 2024 employment report:⁶

“Other compensation” is sign-on and end-of-year bonus. Inside finance, investment management means £109,902 and investment banking £102,260, against private equity at £79,560.⁶

Two caveats LBS states itself, and this profile repeats rather than smooths over: the salary data excludes sponsored and self-employed students under MBA CSEA guidelines, and it is a mean, not a median — so the £192,000 top end pulls it upward, and it is not directly comparable to the medians elsewhere in this catalogue.

By destination, 26% went into consulting, 24% into finance and 11% into technology for MBA2024.⁶ Geographically, 43% of the Class of 2025 stayed in the UK, with North America and South East/East Asia at 12% each.⁵

Campus & Life

LBS sits on the edge of Regent’s Park in central London, founded in 1964, with a second campus in Dubai used by other programmes. The school runs a deep portfolio around this degree — the Masters in Management, the Masters in Analytics and Management, a Masters in Financial Analysis, an Executive MBA and a One-Year MBA, which is a distinct programme from this one and priced separately. Applicants choosing between the pre-experience and post-experience routes should read the MiM profile beside this one: the deciding question is not curriculum but whether you are applying with five years of work behind you or none.