Is an MBA that costs two years of your life and $150,000 really worth it?

With increasing global competition and a tough job market, business school may hold the key to getting ahead — if you go to the right one.

For our fifth annual survey of the World's Best Business Schools, we asked thousands of professionals from around the world who have experience hiring MBAs to determine the best business school. They came back with a clear favorite: Harvard University.

Survey participants rated the reputation of the graduates from top business schools around the world on a scale of poor to excellent (1 to 5), with excellent ratings used as a tiebreaker. We included responses only from professionals who said they had experience hiring MBAs at least half the time, as well as other filters to optimize our survey pool.

Click here to see a full analysis of the survey results >

Click here to see a map showing the top 25 schools >

In addition to the usual top American schools, international institutions like the London School of Economics (#8), London Business School (#9), Oxford (#13), and INSEAD (#15) placed in the top 15.