Combined MBA Ranking 2007

Question

Since there are many MBA rankings developed by many publications, I combined the results of US News and BW into one. I believe that the rankings by US News and BW are used more widely than Financial Times' and the economist's. The rational behind using combined ranking is that there is less deviation from the mean. 

Methodology: It's easy. I add the rank that a school received from US News and BW together and resort them. (The lower the combined score, the better the rank) For example, for Harvard, US News = 1, BW = 4, so combined score = 5. For Wharton, US News = 3, BW = 2, so the combined score is also 5. Since there are no other schools that get combined score of 5 or lower, both Harvard and Wharton are rank "1st" in my ranking. You get the idea.... So here is the combined ranking... 

Harvard 1
U Penn (Wharton) 1
Chicago 3
Kellogg 4
Stanford 4 
MIT 6
Berkeley 7
Michigan (Ross) 8
Columbia 9
Duke 10
Dartmouth 10
UCLA (Anderson) 12
NYU (Stern) 13
Virginia (Darden) 14
Cornell 15

Well, I don't know if this information will be helpful to anyone. If it does or does not make any sense, please share your comments.

ghibi!

standard · Answer

I think your methodology sounds good, and seeing NYU Stern at the 13th place really breaks my heart. If I get accepted of course.

GHIBI · Answer

I think many people will be curious about the calculation of this ranking, so I'll give you the raw score as well.

Format: Rank. School (US News, BW, Sum)

1. Harvard (1,4,5) 
1. U Penn (Wharton) (3,2,5) 
3. Chicago (6,1,7) 
4. Kellogg (5,3,8)
4. Stanford (2,6,8)
6. MIT (4,7,11)
7. Berkeley (7,8,15)
8. Michigan (Ross) (5,11,16) 
9 Columbia (7,10,17)
10. Duke (11,9,20) 
10. Dartmouth (9,11,20) 
12. UCLA (Anderson) (10,12,22) 
13. NYU (Stern) (13,14,27) 
14. Virginia (Darden) (13,15,28) 
15. Cornell (16,13,29)

ghibi!

dukes · Answer

IMO all rankings are so fundamentally flawed that they're not terribly useful at the top level. Even when you average some of the rankings you're working with flawed inputs. I tend to look at sub-categories that reflect brand value. For US News thats the preer and recruiter scores and for the FT ranking its the "Alumni Recommended Score."

GHIBI · Answer

Dear Dukes,

Thanks for sharing your opinion. I understand your concern; however, I am not in a position to say that rankings from which publication are better than the others and why. I just used my gut feeling that more people look at US News and BW. And all i'm doing here is reorganizing the already published data to get a new perspective. 

ghibi!

rhyme · Answer

I did the same thing a while back using

Business Week
Forbes
Fin Times
US N&W
Economist

And look at each of their rankings, then assign a point value to the top 10. That is, #1 is 10 points, #2 is 9 points, #3 is 8 points, etc, you can then add up the points across each school/ranking to come up with a "combined" rank.

So for example, Chicago gets "10 points" for its BW rank, and only 5 for its US N&W rank.

Curiously, here's the list you get (along with its points)

Chicago 37
Wharton 36
Harvard 36
Stanford 36
Dartmouth 26
Kellogg 23
Columbia 21
MIT 14
Ross 11
Stern 10
Berkeley 10
Yale 8
Virginia 4
Duke 2
Cornell 2
UCLA 1

If you throw in WSJ (I got lazy and stopped) I think Wharton comes out as #1. The list is longer than 10 because the top 10 differ from publication to publication.

https://www.gmatclub.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... bined+rank

GHIBI · Answer

Interestingly, It makes me realize that Yale did not make it to top 15 by both US News and BW, but did well on others.

ghibi!

GMATT73 · Answer

These rankings are completely flawed. Shouldn't Thunderbird be #1? :wink:

GHIBI · Answer

Using the NEW US NEWS 2008, I recalculated the combined rank as follow:

(US News, BW, Raw Score)

1. Harvard (1,4,5) 
1. U Penn (Wharton) (3,2,5) 
3. Chicago (5,1,6) 
4. Kellogg (5,3,8) 
4. Stanford (2,6,8) 
6. MIT (4,7,11) 
7. Berkeley (8,8,16) 
7. Michigan (Ross) (11,5,16) 
9. Dartmouth (7,11,18) 
10. Columbia (9,10,19) 
11. Duke (12,9,21) 
12. NYU (Stern) (10,14,24) 
13. Cornell (14,13,27) 
13. Virginia (Darden) (12,15,27) 
15. UCLA (16,12,28)

yb · Answer

I think rhyme has it on the money!

gogetter · Answer

Its amazing how many international applicants really think Thunderbird is #1. An MBA intern of my current office says they did their research extensively (in bulgaria) but hadn't really heard of UChicago or UMichigan. 

When you go to the Thunderbird website, they have like five "#1" rankings. If I began my research on that page, I could see why they would be thought of as a top program in the world.

lepium · Answer

Upto around mid last year, I thought Thunderbird was a top school, along with the ultra elites and some elites. 

Then some people talked sense to me. And I confirmed the actual position of Thunderbird reading Hjort's cluster system and other posts here in GMATClub.

rhyme · Answer

Yea, I bet you think that now !

Combined MBA Ranking 2007

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