Why Darden's ranking been slippling over the past 5 year?

Disclaimer: I'm a Hoo as well, though I'm headed to Fuqua this year. Applied and accepted at Darden.

I'm one of those who believes rankings are essentially snake oil - the schools in each peer group are probably interchangeable as far as quality, though each has its individual strengths. I think it's pretty absurd to say Fuqua is, overall, a better school than Darden or NYU than Ross because of their respective rankings, though big differences (MIT > Yale) probably do say something.

One thing several students brought up at my Darden interview/tour thing was that the school's ranking was affected by the fact that the faculty there was less research-oriented than at other schools, and that that was a conscious effort on the part of the Darden administration. Spin or fact, who's to say... but I'd say that and their scholarship policy definitely affects their ranking.

They're also a little stingier on aid than they probably need to be. That, combined with the lack of any loan assistance program and the much-emphasized workload (which I think is mostly a lot of hype) made my decision to decline the offer there pretty easy.

Dare I say, for once I completely agree with Toubab. I think for the most part, within the cluster of schools, ultra elite, elite, etc, the schools are generally interchangeable (PE and HBS may be the aberration her). I think to say that Darden is a HBS wannabe may be a bit harsh. As Toubab said, Darden prides itself on the fact that it has a "teaching" faculty. This means that the focus is not on generating research (which is generally heavily weighted in many rankings).

I think one of the great misconceptions about the case method is that you are "teaching yourself". The case method done the wrong way, often leads to this. Case method done the right way is anything but. Facilitating a case is definitely an art and I think the faculty at Darden have it pretty much down.