An Introduction to Business School Ranking Systems
Selecting an MBA program may be a serious decision, but it's best to approach it with the same self-indulgent approach you take when choosing an ice cream flavor--by trusting your personal preferences. Is it the richness that you love? The flavor intensity? The inclusion of sophisticated ingredients like chocolate, coconut, rum, or coffee?
For me, these are the most important criteria--or, in statisticspeak, parameters--and of these, flavor intensity ranks highest in importance. I would give it 60 percent of the total score, and portion out 20 percent each to sophistication of ingredients and richness.
It's unlikely that my methodology suits you exactly--you might find it ludicrous not to factor in creaminess or the inclusion of natural ingredients. The same goes for ranking MBA programs.
Consider the extremely varied ranking methodologies of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, The Economist, the Financial Times, U.S. News and World Report, and The Wall Street Journal. Each reflects its publication's unique personality and values, all the while delving into the myriad of questions that prospective MBA students want to ask.
A Boost toYour Salary
Prospective MBA students generally care about a school's reputation for producing highly paid graduates, but not all ranking systems place a high weighting on salary data. BusinessWeek does not factor salary in, nor does The Wall Street Journal; while U.S. News and World Report gives it just 14 percent of the score's weight. The Economist places a 20-percent weighting on salary data, while the FT weights it 40 percent.
Salary data makes sense with the FT style, which is focused on parameters that can be numerically measured. It is the most statistically-based methodology of the group, with The Economist coming a close second.
Salary data is often very similar between top schools, however, so it should not be the most important factor in selecting a school, said Paul Danos, Dean for Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business. While Danos notes that Dartmouth ranks at the top for typical post-MBA compensation, he says that fitting in with the overall learning environment is what's most important for students.
"I think the big differences among the top twenty schools in any one of those rankings is personalization and size. A school like Tuck is on a small scale. A school like Wharton [of The University of Pennsylvania] is big scale... I would say that to come to Tuck, you have to be the kind of person that wants to be interacting all the time with your classmates," Danos said. To track the level of personalized attention students get, The Economist includes a student-to-faculty ratio.
The Spectrum of Systems
There is of course a spectrum, from detailed to simple, and from statistically based to opinion based. U.S. News and World Report is at a mid-point between the highly statistically based methodologies of The Economist and the Financial Times, and the highly opinion-oriented BusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal. At this mid-point, the methodology is split between statistics like placement success upon graduation, to the highly subjective--yet very knowledgeable--opinions of students and corporate human resources professionals.
So which ranking is right for you? Only your own, warns John Birge, professor at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. He says it is unlikely that any ranking system will offer a perfect reflection of your preferences.
"Each prospective student... is an individual, and should use her/his individual preferences," he said. "I would hope that a publisher's weighted average of some selection criteria would play a minor role in those preferences."