The GMAT Club » full-time MBA rankings

4 Ways You Should NOT Use the MBA Rankings

accepted.com — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 16:29:06 +0000

You’ll find loads of articles online enumerating the ways in which you can use the MBA rankings to your benefit. Most of these articles are found on the ranking websites. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t trust what you read on BusinessWeek, The Financial Times, or U.S. News – after all, the rankings do offer data comparing top MBA programs – but I do believe these sites are not offering you a complete picture.

So now I’d like to present you with the other side of the story – the rankings’ limitations. Blinding yourself to the rankings’ flaws could lead to an expensive, time-consuming mistake: choosing the wrong MBA program for you.

• They don’t measure your priorities.

• General rankings hide strengths (and weaknesses) in specific areas. There are numerous “gem” programs that thrive outside the top ten or top twenty. Many MBA students have a great chance of gaining acceptance PLUS receiving financial aid at these gem schools.

• Averages are exactly that. Average. They aren’t a cut-off and don’t reflect extenuating circumstances or the interplay between myriad factors in an admissions decision. At every school there will always be applicants who are accepted with below-average stats and who are rejected with above-average stats.

• Surveys, especially surveys of students and alumni, can be gamed. Students and alumni know that higher rankings increase the value of their degrees and have an incentive to think kindly of their schools.

In short, don’t give the rankings too much importance. Don’t replace school research and self-reflection with rankings to determine where you should apply or attend.

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This article originally appeared on the Accepted Admissions Consulting Blog, the official blog of Accepted.com.

2012 Best U.S. and International B-Schools

accepted.com — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 10:44:44 +0000

Businessweek just released its latest biannual rankings. Below you’ll find the top 10 business schools in the U.S. and abroad. 2010 ranking positions are in parentheses.

Top 10 U.S. Business Schools

Chicago Booth (1)
Harvard Business School (2)
University of Pennsylvania Wharton (3)
Stanford GSB (5)
Northwestern Kellogg (4)
Duke Fuqua (6)
Cornell Johnson (13)
Michigan Ross (7)
MIT Sloan (10)
UVA Darden (11)

Top 10 International Business Schools

London Business School (5)
INSEAD (1)
IE Business School (3)
Queen’s School of Business (2)
Oxford Saïd (16)
ESADE (4)
Western Ontario Ivey (6)
IESE (12)
IMD (7)
McGill University (11)

As you can see, the top 6 spots domestically are virtually unchanged, but there are a few big changes in the U.S. rankings. First, Cornell Johnson made a nice leap up the list from 13^th place to 7^th place, and CMU Tepper jumped from 15^th to 11^th place. Big drops include UC Berkeley Haas (13^th this year, 8^th last year) and Columbia Business School (14^th this year, 9^th last year). Further down the list, Maryland Smith made a sizable leap from 42^nd place last year to 24^th place this year, and Southern Methodist Cox dropped significantly from 12^th place last year to 29^th place this year.

Shifts in the international rankings include a nice jump for Oxford Saïd from 16^th place to 5^th place; a four-slot bump up for IESE from 12^th to 8^th place; and a drop for York Schulich of 9^th place to 14^th place.

Accepted.com ~ Helping You Write Your Best

This article originally appeared on the Accepted Admissions Consulting Blog, the official blog of Accepted.com.

More 2012 Economist MBA Rankings Data

accepted.com — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 23:03:13 +0000

We already analyzed The Economist’s rankings of the top 25 global MBA programs; now we’re going to provide insights from the Poets & Quants article, “The Economist’s Winners & Losers.” In short, volatility is the name of the game.

23 of the 100 top global MBA programs saw double-digit changes (jumps or falls) this year.
The awards for the biggest falls go to University College Dublin’s Smurfit School and Vlerick Leuven, both of which dropped 25 places.
In the U.S., USC Marshall takes the loser’s cake with a 21-spot drop from 22^nd to 43^rd place. Penn State’s Smeal School of Business dropped 18 places from 50^th to 68^th.
The Indian Institute of Management-Ahmadehad wins points for the biggest jump, going from 28^th place in 2011 to 56^th place this year (22 places). The next biggest jump was Lancaster University Management School which went from 100^th to 80^th place over the course of the year.
The biggest jumpers in the U.S. were Temple University Fox (89^th to 77^th), Cornell Johnson (25^th to 15^th), and Georgetown McDonough (44^th to 35^th).
Newcomers to the top 100 list include Arizona State (59^th), Texas Christian (71^st), the International University of Japan (79^th), St. Gallen University (81^st), WHU Germany (87^th), the International University of Monaco (97^th), and Case Western Reserve Weatherhead (100^th).

Please see our article on The Economist’s top 25 MBA programs for 2012 for more information.

Accepted.com ~ Helping You Write Your Best

This article originally appeared on the Accepted Admissions Consulting Blog, the official blog of Accepted.com.

2012 Economist Global B-School Ranking

accepted.com — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 20:53:35 +0000

The Economist’s top 25 full-time global MBA program rankings offer few surprises. Here are a few points to note:

European b-schools in general dropped a few places from last year. Most notably, IMD, ranked in third place in 2011, and dropped to tenth place in 2012. Cranfield got bumped off the list – in 2010, this British b-school was ranked #15; in 2011 it dropped to #23.
York Schulich lost its footing the top ten by dropping from ninth to sixteenth place, leaving the top ten without a Canadian representative.
New to the top ten this year is MIT Sloan, which ranks as #7 – up from #11 in 2011.
Another big jumper this year was Cornell Johnson which jumped up 10 spots, from #25 to #15.
New schools in the top 25 this year are Emory Goizueta (which jumped from #28 to #21), UCLA Anderson (#27 last year and now at #23), and Michigan Ross (which moved up six places from #30 last year to #24 this year).
Bumped from the top 25 this year: Cranfield (as mentioned above), USC Marshall (#22 last year), and Duke Fuqua (#20 last year). (See “The Economist Posts Which MBA? 2011 Rankings” for more on the 2011 rankings.)

The Complete Economist “Which MBA?” 2012 Top 25 Rankings (2011 rank in parentheses)

For more insight into The Economist’s rankings, please check out our interview with the man behind these rankings, The Economist’s Bill Ridgers, as well as Poets & Quants’ analysis of the these rankings.

Accepted.com ~ Helping You Write Your Best

This article originally appeared on the Accepted Admissions Consulting Blog, the official blog of Accepted.com.

4 Ways You Should NOT Use the MBA Rankings

accepted.com — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 10:35:29 +0000

They don’t measure your priorities.
General rankings hide strengths (and weaknesses) in specific areas. There are numerous “gem” programs that thrive outside the top ten or top twenty. Many MBA students have a great chance of gaining acceptance PLUS receiving financial aid at these gem schools.
Averages are exactly that. Average. They aren’t a cut-off and don’t reflect extenuating circumstances or the interplay between myriad factors in an admissions decision. At every school there will always be applicants who are accepted with below-average stats and who are rejected with above-average stats.
Surveys, especially surveys of students and alumni, can be gamed. Students and alumni know that higher rankings increase the value of their degrees and have an incentive to think kindly of their schools.

In short, don’t give the rankings too much importance. Don’t replace school research and self-reflection with rankings to determine where you should apply or attend.

For more tips on how you should and should not use school rankings please see Accepted’s free, instantly downloadable special report, MBA Rankings: What You Need to Know.

By Linda Abraham, president and founder of Accepted.com and co-author of the new, definitive book on MBA admissions, MBA Admission for Smarties: The No-Nonsense Guide to Acceptance at Top Business Schools .

This article originally appeared on the Accepted Admissions Consulting Blog, the official blog of Accepted.com.

Chicago Booth Nabs Top Spot in Latest Economist Rankings

stacyblackman — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 03:05:23 +0000

The Economist recently announced its 2012 full-time MBA rankings, and the Chicago Booth School of Business came out way ahead in one area the MBA students polled believe is most important: Booth is a program that opens an array of new career opportunities.

Despite Booth’s reputation for finance and “super quants”, The Economist found it to be a well-rounded MBA program, with graduates gushing about finding employment in the widest range of industries, and students believing the Chicago Booth career services were top-notch.

Last year’s first-place winner, Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, slipped into second-position in 2012, and Darden School of Business crept up a notch to third place this time around. Some schools made big moves in this latest round of rankings, with Cornell’s Johnson School jumping ten spots to come in 15th, and Switzerland’s IMD dropping into 10th place after coming in third in 2011.

The Economist Top Ten Full-Time MBA Programs

Chicago Booth School of Business
Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
Darden School of Business
Harvard Business School
Columbia Business School
UC Berkeley Haas School of Business
MIT Sloan School of Management
Stanford Graduate School of Business
IESE Business School
IMD

Looking at an initial selection of 135 leading business schools around the world, the ranking criteria The Economist uses is based on how well the program opens new career opportunities (35%), one’s personal development/education experience (35%), increase in salary (20%), and the potential to network (10%).

Data were collected during spring 2012 using two web-based questionnaires, one for business schools and one for students and recent graduates. A total of 15,550 students and graduates participated.

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