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CATEGORY - RANKINGS

Monday, November 17, 2008

BusinessWeek 2008 Business School Rankings: A Closer Look

Today we’ll take a closer look at how the various top programs fared in BusinessWeek’s most recent business school rankings, released last week.

Chicago Booth held firmly to the number one spot it secured in the 2006 rankings, boasting high scores in both the corporate recruiter and graduate surveys. Harvard Business School (HBS) and Wharton traded places this year, with HBS climbing to number two and Wharton slipping to number four. BW’s Louis Lavelle attributed Wharton’s slide to a poorer showing in the intellectual capital category this year than in 2006. 

Columbia, meanwhile, advanced from the number 10 spot to number seven, but MIT Sloan and Berkeley’s Haas School of Business each slipped slightly. Also noteworthy was the fact that Southern Methodist University (18) and Brigham Young University (22) each cracked the top 25 this year for the first time ever. SMU, for its part, has been among the participating schools for years, but lacked sufficient response rates in the recruiter and student portions of the ranking to secure a top spot before now, according to BW’s Geoff Gloeckler.

There were also two newcomers to the Global MBA rankings, IE Business School (2) and Oxford’s Saïd Business School (10). Like SMU, IE has long been a participant but until this year had insufficient recruiter and student response rates, Gloeckler said.

Yale School of Management, meanwhile, seems to have fallen back slightly. It came in at 24 this year, down from 19 in 2006. Lavelle attributed its fall to low student survey scores.

In an article accompanying the rankings, BW takes a look at the current business school landscape, which it says is marked by surging application rates amid “wretched” recruiting prospects.

As has historically been the case in times of economic downturn, application rates to business schools are rising steadily. According to the BW report, schools are reporting double-digit increases in application volume. Chicago Booth, for example, has seen a 20 percent surge in attendance at information sessions around the globe.

But even as more students clamor to get in, job prospects upon graduation are uncertain, with some schools bracing for the toughest MBA job market since the dotcom bust. “I think next fall is going to be very, very difficult,” George Daly, dean of Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, told BW.

The article went on to cite a survey by umbrella group MBA Career Services Council, in which 70 percent of 77 participating schools reported a downturn in full-time recruiting opportunities in financial services in October.

As a result, some students are shifting their focus from investment banking to consulting and other fields. Attendance at recruiting presentations by consulting firms is standing room only, New York University’s Stern School of Business Dean Gary Fraser told BW.

A shift is also taking place in the classroom, as professors are introducing new case studies and re-writing syllabi as part of an effort to make sense of the financial crisis and market upheaval.

Risk management, meanwhile, is expected to play a much more important role in business school curriculums over the next three to five years, according to the BW report, a trend that Robert Meyer, co-director of Wharton’s Risk Management & Decision Processes Center, calls “potentially transformational.”

Thursday, November 13, 2008

BusinessWeek Releases 2008 Business School Rankings, Chicago Booth Tops U.S. List

BusinessWeek today released its 2008 rankings of the world’s top business schools as part of a live chat event moderated by editors Louis Lavelle, Geoff Gloeckler and Francesca Di Meglio. The chat format was designed both to build excitement around the rankings’ release and provide readers with an opportunity to ask questions about everything from the rankings methodology to the suprises the BW team encountered while compiling the list.

Kicking things off, Gloeckler began by revealing the top 10 international schools, counting down to the top spot. They were

10. Oxford (Said)
9. IESE
8. Toronto (Rotman)
7. IMD
6. ESADE
5. London Business School
4. Western Ontario
3. INSEAD
2. IE Business School
1. Queens

Queens holds the top spot in the global MBA rankings for the third consecutive year. But at number two, IE is a newcomer to the rankings. Number three INSEAD, meanwhile, advanced from the number six spot it held last year.

Lavelle then took the reins, doling out the top 30 U.S. full-time MBA programs one by one. We won’t list all 30 here – for that you can check the BW site – but we will give you the top 15. Drumroll please:

15. Indiana (Kelley)
14. UCLA (Anderson)
13. NYU (Stern)
12. Dartmouth (Tuck)
11. Cornell (Johnson)
10. UC Berkeley (Haas)
9. MIT (Sloan)
8. Duke (Fuqua)
7. Columbia
6. Stanford
5. Michigan (Ross)
4. Penn (Wharton)
3. Kellogg (Northwestern)
2. Harvard

And for the second year in a row…though sporting a new name…BW’s top-ranked U.S. MBA program is the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

As always, we encourage you to use these rankings as one of several tools for researching which MBA program promises to best fit your individual needs and goals.

While not yet live on the BW site at the time of this posting, the full rankings will no doubt be available there soon, and we will provide analysis of this year’s shifts among those jockeying for the top spots in upcoming posts. But for now, we wanted you to have the information as soon as it was released.

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Wall Street Journal Releases First EMBA Ranking

Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management snagged the top spot, followed by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania as number two in the Wall Street Journal’s first survey of executive MBA programs, released yesterday.

Partnering with the Management Research Group of Portland, Maine, and tapping the expertise of Journal editor Jennifer Merritt, who formerly headed up BusinessWeek’s business school rankings, the Journal has officially entered the EMBA ranking game.

The result of extensive surveys with current students, recent grads, and human-resources and executive-development managers at companies across 23 industries, the ranking reveals the top 25 schools around the globe that provide “the rigor needed to build tomorrow’s corporate leaders and C-suite executives,” according to the Journal.

Rounding out the top five programs were the Thunderbird School of Global Management at number three, the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business at number four; and the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School at number five.

To reach its conclusions, the Journal took into account survey scores from students and corporations of 73 EMBA programs at 53 business schools across nine countries. In addition to the student and corporate scores, the rankings also measured what employers wanted out of programs and how well students felt their programs developed those skills.

To compile the final rankings, student and corporate ratings were weighted 40 percent each, and the skills ratings were weighted 20 percent. 

Kellogg and Wharton have among the largest EMBA programs, with 843 candidates currently enrolled in the seven Kellogg programs and with 406 students currently enrolled in Wharton’s two programs. Both schools’ programs got high marks from companies – nearly double their closest competitors – which put them squarely in the lead despite lower scores from students.

That’s because corporate scores varied the most – the two leaders far outpaced those in the middle of the pack. In contrast, student scores were closer in range. So even though Wharton came in at number 15 in terms of student ratings, it was still within striking distance of the leading schools’ scores.

That said, for the number one school in the student ranking, the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, a particularly strong student score is what guaranteed it a place in the top five.

In addition to determining how the various schools measured up to one another, the Journal rankings also revealed interesting information about what students are looking for in EMBA programs overall. Among the key findings:

• School reputation is the top consideration for students choosing which program to attend, as noted by 51 percent of student respondents.
• Quality faculty is a key factor, with 78 percent of students reporting that they considered their school because of its distinguished faculty.
• Students are drawn to EMBA programs because they offer a way to develop leadership skills without losing more than a few days a month in the office and because what they learn in school can be immediately applied on the job. “Learn on Friday and Saturday, apply on Monday,” is how one respondent put it.
• Cost was relatively unimportant whether or not companies helped pay the bill. Program tuition ranged from $65,000 to $160,000; nearly 34 percent of students said they paid their own way, 30 percent said their employers paid the entire bill, and 13 percent said their companies paid at least half. (Average out-of-pocket expense among respondents was $45,000.)
• Distance is not a deterrent for the right program. While the majority of students (64 percent) traveled less than 50 miles one way, 7 percent commuted up to 200 miles and nearly 9 percent schlepped a whopping 1,000 miles or more one way.
• With an EMBA comes a bonus or promotion or both. Of those surveyed, 24 percent report having been given both a raise and promotion since they started classes and another 30 percent expect both in the next year.

Companies, meanwhile, have their own set of expectations. Quick return on investment topped the list, with 26 percent of companies saying they expect to see management and leadership skills put to use immediately, and an equal percentage expect them to be put to use within a year of graduation. Human-resource-development managers – 64 percent of them – view EMBA programs as a means of holding onto talent. And 55 percent of company respondents called the EMBA a critical business investment.

Despite the high marks for many programs, the rankings suggest that there’s still room for improvement. Companies sometimes complain that students return from EMBA programs seeking to solve business problems like academic exercises – without practical sense. Students complained about programs that rely too heavily on distance technology that doesn’t always work well or enhance the learning process.

Finally, more flexibility was called for by many students, for whom program scheduling can prove too difficult work into an existing work routine or for whom the 15 hours or more of study per week is too much to carry.

To view the complete rankings, click here. To read more about the methodology the Journal employed to compile its rankings, click here.

Monday, September 08, 2008

IE Business School Climbs to Top Tier of América Economía MBA Ranking

Spain’s IE Business School shot up eight places this year to secure the number four spot worldwide in an annual ranking of MBA programs by América Economía, a leading Latin American business journal. According to this year’s ranking, Harvard comes out on top, followed by Stanford, Wharton and IE, which also ranked first in Europe.

In compiling its rankings, América Economía considers the school’s prestige, networking potential, knowledge of the Latin American region, scholarship programs, international agreements and alliances, the return on investment offered by its MBA program and career progression of its graduates.

According to IE Director of External Relations Gonzalo Garland, the school’s ascent toward the top of the rankings is the result of a concerted push in the Latin American region over the last three decades.

“IE has offices in eight countries in Latin America that provide support for IE students while serving as a platform for networking among our alumni and for building relations with institutions that play a key role in each country,” he said in a statement.

As always, those of us here at Clear Admit encourage applicants to use rankings as just one of many tools when evaluating options for business school. But especially if Latin America features into your future plans, we though you might find this of interest.

To view the ranking in its entirety, click here. (Note: Rankings of Latin American business schools appear on page one, followed by the global rankings on page two.)

Monday, January 28, 2008

Financial Times Releases 2008 Global MBA Rankings

The Financial Times released its 2008 Global MBA rankings today, with the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business claiming the number one spot for the fourth year in a row. Wharton’s company at the top remained relatively unchanged – Columbia, Stanford, Harvard and the London Business School (LBS) again comprised the top five ranked programs. Notably, LBS shot up from fifth to second this year – assuming the highest rank ever for a European business school – due in great part to the growth of London as a world economic center.

“As London has grown as a world financial centre, so has the popularity of British business schools, with students eager to work in the U.K. on graduation,” reported the FT in its analysis of this year’s ranking. Indeed, as we reported last week, LBS students overwhelmingly choose to remain in London upon graduation. Of last year’s graduating class, almost 70 percent took their first job in London last year, even though fewer than 10 percent of the students were British.

The rankings help make clear the ways in which the success of business schools is closely linked to the current business environment, according to the FT analysis. In addition to a rise in popularity of British schools, this year’s rankings also bear out the recent surge of world-class business schools in Asia, particularly China.

“The rise in volume and quality of Asian business schools is also economically linked,” Arnoud De Meyer, director of the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge, told the FT. “This is for a very simple reason: the demand for business schools is correlated with [the size of] GDP,” he continued.

U.S. schools, meanwhile, are being impacted by the weak dollar – though the impact is felt in different ways by different students. For non-U.S. students, the weak dollar means that jobs in the U.S. no longer carry an expected salary premium. But at the same time, tuition to U.S. programs is now also effectively cheaper.

U.S. schools continue to best their European counterparts where funding is concerned as well, the FT reports. Healthy endowments at U.S. schools help attract both faculty and students. Lisa Giannangeli, director of marketing for MBA admissions at Stanford, told the FT that 72 percent of students in this year’s class received some form of financial aid. “We paid over $7 million in grants and research assistantships,” she said.

Attention to academic research output and alumni satisfaction also differentiates U.S. schools from their European counterparts, according to the FT report. “We haven’t gone nearly as far as many U.S. schools,” says Michael Luger, director of Manchester Business School in the United Kingdom and a former academic at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler School. European school will continue to increase their focus on alumni, he predicts.

But as European schools seem to be attempting to emulate U.S. schools in these areas, U.S. schools meanwhile are looking to European programs for guidance on curriculum development and teaching methods, the FT continued. Specifically, several top schools – including Yale, Stanford and Columbia – have reshaped their programs to include more teamwork and overseas projects.

Interestingly, the FT analysis points to U.S. schools’ accepting greater numbers of recent undergraduates into MBA programs as another major point differentiating them from their European counterparts. In another post last week, we took a look at this relatively recent trend in the U.S. According to the FT, the ability to enter an MBA program in the U.S. without prior related work experience could prove particularly attractive in the future to European career changers.

For as much as current economic conditions may affect European and U.S. schools differently, there are also ways in which the overall economic climate may impact business schools more universally. More on that in tomorrow’s post…

Monday, December 03, 2007

Financial Times Releases 2007 European Business School Rankings

The Financial Times (FT) has released its 2007 European Business School Rankings, and gold and silver go to the Paris HEC School of Management and the London School of Business respectively, echoing last year’s results. The battle for bronze, though, was more exciting to watch. INSEAD shot up from the number-10 spot it held last year to steal third, knocking Switzerland’s IMD down to fourth.

The European Business Schools Ranking is a meta ranking of European schools according to their results in five other FT rankings released this year, which look specifically at MBA, EMBA, open executive education, executive education, and management masters programs at business schools around the globe.

The EMBA program at INSEAD, with campuses in Fontainebleau, France, and Singapore, was included in the European ranking for the first time this year, helping the school make its ascent toward the top.

European schools in general are optimistic about the future, according to the FT. This is especially true given the approaching 2010 deadline for implementation of the Bologna Accord, which is designed to harmonize the European higher educational system and provide a more internationally recognized bachelors-masters progression for awarding degrees at schools in each of the 46 signatory countries. The anticipated consequence of the accord – and resulting parity between graduate program degrees across countries – is greater mobility for students and faculty.

In anticipation of the Bologna Accord’s implementation, there has been an explosion in masters programs across Europe. Of these, more than 12,000 are set to teach management, according to a report by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC).

The exact impact this will have on the traditional MBA market is unclear, but applications appear to be steady, the FT reports. “Most schools are reporting an increase in uptake of all courses,” Jeanette Purcell, chief executive of the Association of MBAs, told the FT. Interest in part-time MBAs, executive MBAs and distance learning seem to be on the rise, she says, but not to the detriment of traditional MBAs.

Purcell points to declining employer sponsorship of graduate management education as a contributing factor to the trend toward part-time programs, as students increasingly look for ways to pay their own way while working. Advances in technology, too, have made distance learning more attractive, she says.

Some European schools are reporting greater interest from abroad, especially as the Bologna Accord promises to make European degrees carry the same significance as those from other schools around the globe. Increased U.S. marketing and interest in one-year MBA programs are also cited as driving factors.

According to the FT, the Instituto de Empresa (IE) in Madrid counts 21 U.S. participants in its international MBA program this year and sees increased interest from Asia and consistently strong demand from India. Applicants at IE rose by 30 percent this year, and student numbers by 15 percent, the FT reports. The school is considering moving to two intakes – in April and November – and combining its full-time Spanish MBA program with its international MBA program taught in English.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

BusinessWeek 2007 EMBA Rankings Preview

For our readers with an interest in executive education, we wanted to point out that BusinessWeek Online is poised to announce its bi-annual ranking of global EMBA programs. Though the main ranking page still points to the 2005 addition, the site has just published a slideshow featuring the top 25 schools. We’ll post again with some commentary once the feature is made more official, but in the meantime, here’s a preview of this year’s top-ranked programs:

1. Northwestern (Kellogg)
2. University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
3. University of Chicago
4. University of Michigan
5. USC (Marshall)
6. Columbia Business School
7. Emory (Goizueta)
8. UCLA (Anderson)
9. Duke (Fuqua - global)
10. UNC (Kenan Flagler)
11. Southern Methodist University (Cox)
12. Georgetown (McDonough)
13. Cornell (Johnson)
14. Ohio State (Fisher)
15. Instituto de Empressa
16. IMD
17. IESE
18. INSEAD
19. NYU (Stern)
20. London Business School
21. ESADE
22. Thunderbird
23. Queen’s University
24. Washington (Olin)
25. Villanova University

Monday, October 01, 2007

Economist Intelligence Unit Full-Time MBA Ranking 2007

The Economist Intelligence Unit released its annual ranking of MBA programs last week. The ranking methodology for this list considers four factors - new career opportunities, personal development/educational experience, increase in salary and networking potential - as evaluated based on data from the schools and surveys from students and recent alumni. Another interesting feature of the Economist ranking is that a school’s ratings over the three previous years are also taken into account, tempering the effect of dramatic changes in policies or resources and reflecting and more gradual increase in quality as a student would experience them.

Readers can visit the EIU site for a great interactive MBA ranking chart to see how the schools stack up in a number of different criteria. The top 20 overall, meanwhile, are listed below:

1. University of Chicago Graduate School of Business
2. Stanford Graduate School of Business
3. IESE Business School - University of Navarra
4. Dartmouth College–Tuck School of Business
5. IMD - International Institute for Management Development
6. California at Berkeley, University of–Haas School of Business
7. University of Cambridge Judge Business School
8. New York University Stern School of Business
9. IE Business School
10. Henley Management College
11. Cranfield School of Management
12. Michigan, University of - Stephen M Ross School of Business
13. Harvard Business School
14. Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management
15. London Business School
16. MIT Sloan School of Management
17. INSEAD
18. Columbia Business School
19. Ashridge
20. Hong Kong University of Science and Technology School of Business and Management

Chicago has moved into the #1 position this year, propelled to the top by its stellar career service resources, displacing IESE, which had enjoyed the top spot for two years in a row. Other notable movers include Haas (up four stops from a 10th place finish last year), Cambridge (to 7th from 11th) and IE, which rose from a #16 ranking to crack the top 10.

The Economist rankings have historically shaken up the generally held notions about how schools stack up (evidenced by Stern’s #8 status as compared to Wharton’s absence from this year’s top 20), highlighting the importance of careful research and consideration of what one is looking for from an MBA program.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Wall Street Journal 2007 MBA Rankings Released

As many of our readers know, the Wall Street Journal released their business school rankings online late yesterday. The Wall Street Journal’s ranking of the national (US) MBA programs relies on feedback from corporate recruiters at key firms in order to rate the b-schools. More specifically, the results are based on the following criteria:

1. Recruiter feedback on each school (for 21 different attributes)
2. Recruiter plans to hire graduates from the schools in the future
3. Recent hiring patterns of corporate recruiters

While traditionally less popular than the Business Week or US News MBA rankings, the Journal has been gaining ground with increased fanfare surrounding their rankings each year. Their related hard-copy publication, WSJ Guide to the Top Business Schools, helps in this effort. In addition, a GMAC survey showed that the WSJ rankings were viewed as “most credible” by MBA applicants (although we’d like to suggest that the reputation of the newspaper itself may help this perception along).

While the recruiters-only focus of the WSJ rankings may always provoke criticism, the rankings appear to be here to stay. Without further ado, let’s take a look at the top national programs for this year:

1. Dartmouth College (Tuck)
2. University of California, Berkeley (Haas)
3. Columbia University
4. MIT Sloan
5. Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper)
6. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler)
7. University of Michigan (Ross)
8. Yale University
9. University of Chicago
10. University of Virginia (Darden)

It’s interesting to note that Wharton and Kellogg have continued to slip in these rankings, moving out of the top five last year and out of the top ten this year. Ross likewise moved down within the rankings this year, from first to seventh, while Haas and MIT Sloan each moved up several notches to enter the top five. Harvard and Stanford continue to miss out on the top 10, holding steady at 14 and 19, respectively.

Beyond the US national ranking, the Journal also published an international ranking - using a slightly different methodology that measures non-US-based employment upon graduation. Here are this year’s top “international” business schools:

1. ESADE
2. IMD
3. London Business School
4. IPADE
5. MIT Sloan
6. Columbia Business School
7. Essec
8. Tecnológico de Monterrey (EGADE)
9. HEC Paris
10. Thunderbird

We encourage our readers to review the WSJ Career Journal site for further details about the rankings methodologies. As always, please remember that rankings are one of many resources for information regarding MBA programs.

Monday, August 20, 2007

MBA News: Rankings News, Kellogg Adds Global Course Requirement

The annual U.S. News & World Report rankings of undergraduate colleges and universities hit news stands today and is already generating criticism from schools, students and other commentators. Although the controversy is not unusual, this year’s debate adds a twist that could impact the magazine’s graduate business school rankings in the coming years. The story started this spring, when leaders of many small liberal arts colleges joined together to boycott the U.S. News & World Report reputation survey, which accounts for 25% of the undergraduate rankings. A similar survey is used in the business school rankings, and asks top academic officials to rate schools based on their personal opinions of the programs. Critics call the reputation survey a self-perpetuating cycle, since a school’s place in the rankings impacts public perception of its quality, which is then reflected in the results of the next year’s reputation survey. At the undergraduate level, response rates for this year’s survey dropped to an all time low, raising even more questions about the usefulness of this measure in evaluating schools. Although the anti-rankings backlash is still strongest at the undergraduate level, most graduate programs are watching the battle carefully. Says Kate Will of the Annapolis Group, “I don’t think there is anyone in higher education who is not thinking about this issue.”

In other news, Kellogg announced recently that it will add a global course requirement to its MBA curricula, effective June 2008. The requirement will apply to the all of the school’s MBA programs (full-time, part-time and executive) and Dean Dipak Jain says it is part of Kellogg’s mission to develop “leaders equipped to thrive in the challenging global business landscape.” Some courses expected to count towards the new requirement include Cross-Cultural Negotiation, Global Initiatives in Management (discussed in an April Trivia Tuesday column), International Business Strategy, International Finance, and International Marketing. It seems likely that the new policy will generate continued growth in Kellogg’s international offerings, as students seek out relevant courses through which to fulfill the requirement.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Forbes ROI Rankings

Forbes has just released their biennial ranking of MBA programs. This somewhat unorthodox ranking is based solely on ROI (return on investment). In other words, Forbes looks at MBA program costs, students’ foregone income and graduates’ wages to determine where MBAs get the most bang for their buck.

Check out their web site for a complete list of rankings and a host of related articles and interviews.

The top 10 full-time U.S. programs are as follows:

1. Dartmouth/Tuck
2. Stanford
3. Harvard
4. UVA/Darden
5. UPenn/Wharton
6. Columbia
7. Chicago
8. Yale
9. Northwestern/Kellogg
10. Cornell/Johnson

Although the top ten schools remain the same as in 2005, there has been some movement within this group. Darden, Harvard and Staford each shifted up several spaces since the last ranking, while Tuck remained Forbes’s best return on investment.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Research Productivity Ranking 2007

Just last week, the University of Texas at Dallas came out with their annual ranking of business schools.  This particular list is compiled by examining the research productivity of faculty at an institution, as measured by instances of publication in 24 peer-reviewed journals during a 5-year window (2002-2006 for this year’s results).

While we always recommend that rankings be taken with a grain of salt - particularly if they have a narrow focus - this is an interesting and almost refreshingly simple way to look at the academic strength of the leading programs. It is also a ranking that is seemingly devoid of opinion (student, recruiter or otherwise) and based solely on objective criteria.

Let’s take a look at the top 20 schools in this year’s ranking:

1. University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
2. New York University (Stern)
3. Harvard University
4. University of Chicago
5. Duke University (Fuqua)
6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan)
7. University of Maryland at College Park
8. Columbia University
9. University of Michigan (Ross)
10. University of Texas at Austin (McCombs)
11. Stanford University
12. Northwestern University (Kellogg )
13. University of California at Los Angeles (Anderson)
14. University of Southern California (Marshall)
15. University of Minnesota at Twin Cities (Minneapolis)
16. Pennsylvania State University at University Park
17. Michigan State University
18. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler)
19. Emory University (Goizueta)
20. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

While Wharton is no stranger to the top spot in b-school rankings (the school tops this particular ranking for the third year in a row), the rest of the results are really rather interesting.  Many of the usual suspects are present, but not where one might expect; Stern tops HBS (with 220 faculty articles published in leading journals as compared to Harvard’s 168) and Duke rounds out the top 5, while Kellogg and Stanford hover just below the top 10 mark.  Meanwhile, schools like Yale, Cornell and Tuck, the last of which just achieved a #7 finish in this year’s U.S. News ranking, are absent while a number of lesser-known programs enjoy top 20 status.

Of course, factors like school size need to be taken into account (as small schools like Stanford and Tuck are naturally going to have a difficult time matching the scholarly output of much larger institutions like Harvard and Wharton), but this list might point toward several up and coming programs that have put resources toward enhancing their academic reputations and offerings.

Friday, March 30, 2007

U.S. News Full-time MBA Ranking 2008

Earlier today, U.S. News & World Report released its 2008 ranking of the top full-time U.S. MBA programs. Because this particular ranking relies heavily on statistics like GMAT averages, GPAs, starting salaries and peer assessments, there’s generally less variation year-to-year than in rankings based on student and recruiter opinion (the dominant metrics in several other prominent rankings). There are, however, a few interesting changes to note when comparing the list to last year’s ranking.
First, let’s take a look at this year’s top-ranking schools:

1. Harvard University
2. Stanford University
3. University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan)
5. Northwestern University (Kellogg)
5. University of Chicago
7. Dartmouth College (Tuck)
8. University of California–Berkeley (Haas)
9. Columbia University
10. New York University (Stern)
11. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor (Ross)
12. Duke University (Fuqua)
12. University of Virginia (Darden)
14. Cornell University (Johnson)
14. Yale University
16. University of California–Los Angeles (Anderson)
17. Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper)
18. University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler)
18. University of Texas–Austin (McCombs)
20. Emory University (Goizueta)

The top nine remains virtually unchanged as compared to last year. The most noteworthy is that Tuck leap-frogged over both Haas and Columbia to land in the #7 spot, but it’s also interesting that Kellogg is tied with regional rival Chicago for the #5 spot (last year it had tied MIT for 4th). As is often the case, there was more movement among schools 10-20. UCLA / Anderson was the biggest mover, dropping from 10 to 16, with Stern rising three spaces to take its place. Ross, which shared the #11 spot with Duke last year, now holds that space alone while Fuqua ties Darden for #12.

While it can be interesting and fun to track these slight changes - especially for those associated with the schools in question - the facts that there is so little change from year to year and that these same programs are included so consistently in the top 20 speaks to the consistent quality of these programs. It also underscores the importance of deeper research to really understand a school and its offerings to put these rankings in perspective and identify the school that’s the best personal and professional fit.

Friday, March 09, 2007

MBA News: BusinessWeek’s Undergraduate B-School Rankings

BusinessWeek’s second annual Undergraduate Business Programs Rankings came out last night and while many of the schools on the list are familiar names, there are several schools new to the top 50 and some significant shifts within the top 20.

Wharton and the University of Virginia’s McIntire School held on to the number one and two spots, respectively, but the number three spot saw some dramatic shifting - UC-Berkeley’s Haas School skyrocketed from number 12 to number 3 in just a year. BusinessWeek’s article explaining the rankings says that the key to Berkeley’s rise was a significant increase in recruiter satisfaction - last year the school ranked 41st in this category and this year their rating jumped to number one.

BusinessWeek’s top 20:

1 University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
2 University of Virginia (McIntire)
3 UC Berkeley (Haas)
4 Emory University (Goizueta)
5 University of Michigan (Ross)
6 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan)
7 Notre Dame (Mendoza)
8 Brigham Young University (Marriott)
9 New York University (Stern)
10 Cornell University
11 Georgetown University (McDonough)
12 Villanova University
13 University of Texas at Austin (McCombs)
14 Boston College (Carroll)
15 UNC at Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler)
16 Washington University (Olin)
17 Wake Forest University (Calloway)
18 Indiana University (Kelley)
19 USC (Marshall)
20 Lehigh University

Since many business schools offer graduate or undergraduate programs, but not both, followers of the MBA rankings may not immediately recognize all of the schools in the top 20. However, with the nation’s top firms recruiting heavily from the leading schools, the bright young graduates of these programs are likely to be the future colleagues and team members of MBA grads.

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

MBA News: Fortune MBA Ranking Disputed, Retracted

The Fortune/CNNMoney.com 2007 MBA ranking has been the subject of some controversy since its release last week, when it became apparent that UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School had been omitted from the list of “Top 50 Business Schools for Getting Hired.” After outcry from students and administrators, who argued that the statistics and methodology should have put their program twelfth on this list, the CNNMoney site has pulled its listing and issued a correction.

This incident underscores the fact that while rankings c