http://rankings.ft.com/rankings/mba/rankings.html

Impressive improvement for Cambridge on this ranking

Do you guys consider this the "Banking" rank?

Wait im confused... the list in teh first post doesnt match the list here at all.

http://rankings.ft.com/rankings/mba/rankings.html

Where is the first list coming from?

First list is exactly the FT list for 2007. For some reason they have put Harvard above Stanford in print, and the other way around online.

Second list is their "List of Lists" where they compiled several lists. I used US only as Stanford appears higher in the Global list-of-lists than in the US, which makes no sense at all.

OK - the article link is http://www.ft.com/cms/s/3ed8a91e-ad5a-11db-8709-0000779e2340,dwp_uuid=991cbd66-9258-11da-977b-0000779e2340.html

However. They don't show you the table.

Doing the same thing with the data they use (which seems to omit US News and World Report) you get:

Tuck 33
Wharton 32
GSB 32
Stanford 27
Columbia 26
HBS 25
Kellogg 21
Ross 20
UC Berkley 12

I only used the us ranks, i think they wieghted if they showed up in the global ones too. Probably a better approach. Either way, its interesting.

kwam - I see where you are coming from but it is difficult to argue there is such a trend.

LBS is in there because of a Europe skew more than anything. They contact alumni to fill out surveys - I would bet most UK based alumni would be more interested in contributing to the FT than BW or whatever. LBS always shines high in the FT.

NYU is a funny one with the FT. The others are standard high performers. Wharton gets tradition on its side more than Finance, GSB will probably feel maligned with its ranking here. Stanford & Harvard are management and never rank at all for Finance.

What is more interesting are the uncharacteristic showings. Columbia is always low on alumni recommendations, which is weird. If you want value for money, Coppead in Brazil (62nd) is your school! Only non-US schools seem to rank high on International mobility, which maybe reflects on the motives of those outside the US persuing MBAs.

There is nothing in their first derivative data set that links to Finance - they will doubtless protect their algorithm to calculate the ranks (I know that the schools will have first seen this the same time as me. Well, maybe later, I was in early).

Maybe I will do a regression analysis on what data each table shows to get you the basis of their calculation (obviously lacking non-shown data).

I am sad, aren't I.

Mostly because its an easy way to compare schools. It's hard and fast. You can say "School X is ranked better than School Y". Same reason people fret over gmat scores: "Score X is better than score Y". There's little to no interpretation involved. Its the same reason when you ask someone for their profile they say "730 GMAT, 3.5 GPA, 6Y WE" because its all quantifiable and easily comparable. Thats not to say that someone should base a decision based on rank - but for the exact same reasons schools care about GMAT, applicants care about rank.

I think there's a bug in your formula at the end - its not counting the right cells.. or I'm missing how you did it - its counting the blank cell (F's) in WSJ, not the 05's - and the 04's in BW, not the 06's, the 05s in eco, not hte 06s, and the 06s in FT not the 07s.

If you take the latest for all you'd get:

Wharton 4.00
Harvard 4.17
Chicago 4.83
Kellogg 5.33
Tuck 5.50
Stanford 5.50
Columbia 6.17
MIT 8.00
Michigan 8.67
UC Berkeley 9.17
NYU 10.83
UCLA 11.33
Duke 11.67
Darden 12.00
Cornell 12.83

And if you take the last two years -

Chicago 4.75
Wharton 4.88
Stanford 4.88
Tuck 5.25
Harvard 5.25
Kellogg 5.50
Columbia 6.00
MIT 8.13
Michigan 8.38
UC Berkeley 9.13
NYU 9.50
UCLA 11.38
Darden 11.88
Duke 12.13
Cornell 13.00

Sorry, I have not saved the spread sheet as the "last version"...
Note that I just put 15 schools from US and ranked them in the order they appeared in each rank...

As someone else once said in some article I read somewhere, "It's a pre screened applicant pool."