The Best MBA Programs in Minneapolis for 2027

Graduates of Concordia-Saint Paul earn the most four years after finishing, a median of $113,086; the lowest figure here is $66,154 at Crown College.

Walden, the highest-ranked of these schools (#1), comes in at $82,853.

What a program costs on this list depends first on who runs it. None of the 6 ranked MBA programs in Minneapolis is public; Walden University in Minneapolis, Bethel University, Concordia University-Saint Paul and Hamline University in Saint Paul, Augsburg University in Minneapolis and Crown College in Saint Bonifacius are all private.

With no public option on the list, residency does not change the price, so a student moving to Minneapolis from another state faces the same rate as a local. Confirm current MBA tuition and fees on each school's own page before comparing.

Admission odds across the MBA programs in Minneapolis are nowhere near uniform. Crown College in Saint Bonifacius admits 23% of applicants, the tightest on this list, while Bethel University and Hamline University in Saint Paul admit 88%, and Walden University runs open admission. A candidate with an uneven undergraduate record has real options here without leaving Minneapolis.

That is a 65-point spread between the tightest and most open reported rates, wide enough that the MBA programs in Minneapolis do not form a single tier. A file that is competitive at Hamline University in Saint Paul will not necessarily clear Crown College in Saint Bonifacius, so applying across the range rather than within one band is the sensible strategy here. Completion does not follow the same order: Walden University finishes 100% of its students, the strongest on this list, on open admission, which is why selectivity is one input to the Program Score rather than the score itself.

The MBA programs in Minneapolis are all private: none of the 6 ranked schools is public. Accreditation is what makes schools comparable at all. For an MBA the signal employers read is business-school accreditation from AACSB sitting on top of the university's institutional accreditation, and a private school is not thereby carrying it. Confirm it on the school's own page: Walden University and Hamline University in Saint Paul are held to the same standard as every other name on this list.

The 6 ranked schools sit across 3 towns, close enough that most Minneapolis candidates can reach several of them. Walden University in Minneapolis leads, followed by Bethel University and Concordia University-Saint Paul in Saint Paul, and the table names the town of each. That density is worth using: applying to three schools inside one metro costs application fees and nothing else, and the recruiting calendars overlap.

4 of the 6 also run a confirmed online option, which keeps the credential but gives up most of the local access that justifies studying in Minneapolis in the first place.

Every one of the MBA programs in Minneapolis points toward the same national labor market. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts national median pay for the field at $105,770 a year, a figure that describes the profession rather than any single school here, and it holds whether a graduate attended Walden University or Hamline University. That is the tradeoff this ranking exists to expose: in the federal wage data, a higher price does not buy a higher salary.

Set against a single national benchmark, the spread in what these schools charge is the reason to look hard at the cheap end before the famous end. Walden University in Minneapolis and Hamline University in Saint Paul feed graduates into the same wage distribution, and nothing in the federal data attaches a higher salary to the higher price. Pay in a metro the size of Minneapolis generally runs above the national median, and so does the cost of living that absorbs it. Full occupational detail, including job-growth projections and metro wage breakdowns, is published by the BLS.