The Economist this week released its annual rankings of top business schools, with European schools IESE and IMD taking the first and second spots respectively, followed by Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Harvard Business School – in that order – rounding out the top five.
In an accompanying article, the Economist helps make sense of why business schools seem to fall in such different orders depending on the ranking you choose. For example, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School barely made it into the top ten in the Economist’s ranking this year (up from 17th last year) but ties for number one (with London Business School) in the Financial Times’ 2009 rankings.
Why such disparity? Because the different publications that produce rankings – which include BusinessWeek, the Wall Street Journal and U.S. News & World Report as well as the FT and the Economist – employ different methodologies to compile their lists. According to the Economist article, that publication’s rankings rely heavily students’ own assessment of their time at business school and how their earning power and marketability increased upon obtaining a degree. This year at IESE, 98 percent of graduates found jobs within three months of graduation with an average basic salary of $125,000, propelling the Spanish school to the top of the list.
The FT’s rankings, meanwhile, focus on academic research as well as graduates’ salaries. And BW ranks U.S. and European schools separately. Hence the wildly different rankings of schools all in a single year. But as the Economist article point, even as different as they are – or perhaps, because they are so different – the rankings still serve a valuable purpose, which is to highlight the many different ways in which business schools can excel.
As always, those of us here at Clear Admit encourage you to consider the rankings as you try to decide which business school will best help you meet your individual goals, but only as one part in a comprehensive evaluation of schools.
To view the Economist’s rankings in their entirety, click here.
