BusinessWeek MBA Ranking

We applaud BusinessWeek for keeping their rankings weighted towards recent events and compiling a rather extensive questionnaire on tens of thousands of students. We certainly like the weighting placed on the schools' attentiveness to their students' and recruiters' needs. These certainly help to keep the schools competitive and have undoubtedly helped contribute to some of the schools' innovations. It is very refreshing to see that schools can not sit back on their laurels and maintain a high ranking based on past performances and reputations.

The rankings contain a good bit of subjectivity, but they are after all rankings, and we are not convinced that such an inherently subjective task can be optimally accomplished without any such judgments. 

Most glaring error

We're actually quite happy with the 2002 BusinessWeek rankings. The most "glaring" error would be Georgetown, which we rank at #24 and BusinessWeek ranks at #30. Admittedly, this is not a hugely material difference in such a subjective ranking as business schools.

The most glaring error was much more easy to identify and defend in 2000, when BusinessWeek ranked Stanford at #11. At that time, we stated the following:

Despite the defense given to Stanford's ranking (#11), we do believe that the school was unduly dinged for a lack of student satisfaction and alleged recruiter mistreatings. Stanford's Graduate School of Business is among the two most selective business schools (Harvard is the other) and its academic curriculum, even if a bit inflexible, is resolutely solid. We fully expect the new dean, Robert Joss, to quickly right the boat and have Stanford in BusinessWeek's top 5 in 2002.

It sure does feel good to be right!  :-)

U.S. News and World Report MBA Ranking

We really, really, like the objectivity and transparency of these rankings. There is no way for a school to be unfairly bashed on a subjective factor. Unfortunately, our biggest fault with their ranking is the lack of subjective judgment factors. (Yes, we are very tough to please.)

Most glaring error

Ohio State. No offense, Buckeye fans, but we are not sure how your program secured a #24 ranking. The Fisher school is not a particularly tough program to gain admission into and we haven't heard any more recruiter ravings about the graduates than the other BusinessWeek second-tier business schools. Perhaps the major construction project will give the school a good boost. We just think it's too early to release a verdict on this.

BusinessSchoolAdmission.Com's MBA Ranking

Our rankings are extremely subjective and we do not eliminate the possibility that if we were to do them again, there would be a few small tweaks to the business school rankings you see above. We looked at the program's selectivity, prestige, and reputation amongst recruiters. After we did this, we then compared our rankings to the "big 2" of BusinessWeek and U.S. News and World Report and were quite surprised with the analysis. 

We really did set out to establish an impartial ranking based on our own knowledge of the business schools. Of the 28 schools listed above, 12 received a ranking by BusinessSchoolAdmission.com that was outside the bounds of the other rankings. However, only 2 of these schools, Emory and Purdue, were ranked more than 2 positions beyond the bounds of the other rankings. 

One of 2 things must be true. Either we were subconsciously biased by the other MBA rankings or we are generally happy with these rankings. We believe it is the latter.

Wall Street Journal MBA Ranking

The Wall Street Journal very recently published its third-ever business school rankings. It continues to produce rankings that make people talk but largely draw disagreement. There is a methodology, believe it or not, but it is based on small sample sizes and encourages recruiters to discuss a particularly good or bad experience at one of the schools. This is quite convenient for making the 'objective' rankings a bit controversial shall we say. In some small improvements over their initial rankings, Stanford jumped to 30 from 39 and they were ranked 45 in the first-ever rankings. (Enough said.) 

Other MBA Rankings

We readily acknowledge there are more rankings than just the four (BWeek, US News, WSJ, and our humble own) that are being floated around. If your thirst for rankings remains unquenched, you can feel free to check out the Financial Times and Business 2.0 amongst others.

Click here to go back to the MBA rankings table.

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