Diversity & MBA programs — a new way to consider the issue

Question

Diversity is more than skin color. It's more than geographical origin, religious inclinations or sexual preferences. It's aptitude and interests. It's life experience. It's demeanor and desire.

When I see MBA programs reference the % of women, international students or US minorities as the sole proxy for diversity, I know fundamentally something is off. People are more than just that. To me, this sort of analysis isn’t very respectful. I believe a good argument could be made that it is degrading.

So ... I took a stab at pulling a more well-rounded look at the diversity inherent in the top 25 US MBA programs.

To do that, I built three separate perspectives on diversity ... then averaged them ... then normalized them over a scale of 0-100 (sorta like the way USNWR scales the programs --- just that my scores (below) are only based on the top 25 programs ... so, the last school on the list will have a score of "0", whereas if I considered ALL schools offering an MBA, the 25th school on this list would almost assuredly not have a score of "0" for diversity).

Diversity Score #1  -- Diverse Institutional Capabilities. To consider this, I looked at the 13 academic specialties USNWR looks at ("who's got the best information systems program", etc. as ranked by administrators at OTHER programs). Generally, the more times a program is mentioned at having a 'top' program in a specialty by other schools, the better it would reference the intellectual and subject matter diversity among faculty, staff, the students attending and companies recruiting ... and ... the higher ranked a school was within a greater number of specialties, the More this particular portion of the aggregated diversity score would go up. Lastly, I also considered some of these academic specialties more 'core' and others in more of a supporting role. For this analysis, I considered Entrepreneurship, Management, Marketing, Accounting, Finance, Operations and Business Analytics are core; Global Business, Non-Profit, Project Management, Real Estate, Info Systems and Supply Chain are supporting. If you did it, you might have ordered the priorities differently, and that would be just fine. But, I did it this way... Since balance Is a cousin idea to diversity, schools with a good balance between core and supporting strengths would also score more highly.

Diversity Score #2  -- Academic Diversity. To build this, I looked at average undergraduate GPAs, average GMAT scores and average work experience. Simply, the numbers are important ... but ... nobody is only one number. Sometimes having more birthdays is more important to delivering value to a client, partner or co-worker. Sometimes it's about intellectual horsepower. Sometimes both. Sometimes neither ... which is why we're also looking at other sources of diversity.

Diversity Score #3  -- Background Diversity. This looks at each schools' relative % of women, international students, and US minorities ... then ... averages these relative percentages and normalizes the score. Then, this score (which is typically the main inputs used for determining inclinations of diversity, is combined with other two immediately above.

So, to come up with a composite diversity score for a school, all three diversity scores are averaged, then the averages are scaled from 0-100. The list below is shown with their ranking, the combined 0-100 score for the three areas, then the school name, then each of their sub-scores -- and, I also put them into tiers based on natural breaks in the results. So, without further adieu, here's the list.

Tier I 
#1 -- 100.0 -- Stanford - (100.0 / 85.3 / 100.0) ... to help read this, Stanford got the best score in the Diverse Institutional Capabilities & Background Diversity scores, and 5th in Academic Diversity (generally, got dinged for a low work experience score)
#2 -- 97.5 -- Wharton - (99.2 / 84.5 / 94.9)

Tier 2 
#3 -- 91.7 -- Columbia - (86.9 / 84.5 /96.9)

Tier 3 
#4 -- 84.7 -- Harvard - (78.9 / 85.8 / 80.9) ... a very tight range ... they’re diverse from many different perspectives, and nearly equally so across the board
#5 -- 84.6 -- Berkeley (Haas) - (86.0 / 100.0 / 59.6) ... Haas has the best combination of high scores AND balanced scores for undergrad GPA, GMAT and work experience, hence their 100.0 score in Academic Diversity ...
#6 -- 81.2 -- Northwestern (Kellogg) - (83.1 / 82.7 / 71.0)
#7 -- 80.9 -- USC (Marshall) - (64.1 / 94.8 / 77.0)
#8 -- 80.7 -- MIT (Sloan) - (77.3 / 79.9 / 78.2) ... their diversity was very well balanced vs their peers ... nothing lopsided ...which I believes underscores their steady rise up the conventional USNWR rankings over the past decade, fwiw ... they’re drawing a diverse pool of people with a variety of ideas and interests, and recruiters are recognizing it, drawing more students to apply, etc.

Tier 4 
#9 -- 74.2 -- Texas (McCombs) - (90.7 / 72.3 / 55.8)
#10 -- 73.5 -- Chicago (Booth) - (69.2 / 82.7 / 64.8)
#11 -- 71.6 -- Michigan (Ross) - (90.9 / 56.9 / 64.3)
#12 -- 70.7 -- Yale SOM - (36.3 / 95.4 / 77.8) ... Yale SOM was the lowest overall ranked school to have any component above 90 ...

Tier 5 
#13 -- 66.7 -- Duke (Fuqua) - (75.9 / 62.4 / 61.1)
#14 -- 66.1 -- NYU (Stern) - (77.2 / 70.2 / 50.4)

Tier 6 
#15 -- 48.5 -- UCLA (Anderson) - (46.8 / 56.9 / 48.8)

Tier 7 
#16 -- 43.7 -- Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) - (65.4 / 25.4 / 49.2)
#17 -- 41.0 -- Indiana (Kelley) - (80.8 / 6.6 / 45.6) ... Kelley was the lowest overall ranked school to have any component above 80 (In part because they had the second worst Academic Diversity score (which was primarily a function of having both materially lower than average GPA and GMAT scores vs the other top 25 programs; they do report a good WE, though)
#18 -- 40.3 -- Dartmouth (Tuck) - (17.3 / 63.7 / 50.2)
#19 -- 38.0 -- Cornell (Johnson) - (59.1 / 21.7 / 44.4)
#20 -- 36.1 -- Virginia (Darden) - (34.5 / 30.5 / 55.4)
#21 -- 34.6 -- Washington (Foster) - (32.6 / 46.8 / 37.0)
#22 -- 32.2 -- Rice (Jones) - (12.0 / 30.3 / 67.8)

Tier 8 
#23 -- 27.9 -- Emory (Guizueta) - (41.4 / 15.2 / 42.5)
#24 -- 19.4 -- UNC (Kenan-Flagler) - (56.1 / 21.0 / 0.0)
#25 -- 0.0 -- Georgetown (McDonough) - (0.0 / 0.0 / 27.1)

.................

Takeaways: 
1) Balanced diversity ... three schools (Harvard, MIT and UCLA) were so balanced in their diversity scores that each constituent score was within a band of 10. Stanford, Wharton, Columbia, Kellogg, Fuqua, and Washington (Foster) were so balanced, their scores were in a band of 15.
2) Diffuse diversity ... schools (Haas, Yale, Kelley, Tuck, Jones and Kenan-Flagler had a range of at least 40 between their highest and lowest scores.
3) Ten scores were registered that exceeded 90 on one area ... and ... 21 instances of a score of 80 or more.
4) Seven scores under 20 were recorded ... and ... only four constituent scores were registered under 10. This indicates there are a few negative outliers, and a greater number of higher performers. It’s not a Gaussian data set; strong negative skew...
5) Indiana holds the interesting bit of tension in that they were, simultaneously, the lowest overall ranked school with any constituent score above 80 ... and ... the highest rated school with any constituent score below 20. If their GPA and GMAT averages would go up, IMO, they’d have a good chance to move their overall USNWR ranking into the middle teens consistently.

bb · Answer

Thanks so much for posting it! This is awesome!!!

Happy to move to the Bschool application forum where it seems to more likely fit in. I will leave a shortcut in this forum too.

Posted from my mobile device

Regenerate · Answer

Elsewhere in this forum , a couple of weeks ago, I published a look at 20 years of USNWR rankings.

The top schools’ average rankings for the last 20 years from that thread are averaged with their ranking above and are shown below ... if a school was ranked 5th on one list and 10th on another, they’d get a 7.5 below:

1.5 - Stanford GSB

2.5 - Harvard 
2.5 - Penn (Wharton)

5.5 - Columbia 
5.5 - Northwestern (Kellogg)
6.0 - Berkeley (Haas) 
6.0 - MIT (Sloan)

8.0 - Chicago (Booth)

11.0 - Michigan (Ross)
11.5 - Duke (Fuqua) 
12.0 - Yale SOM

13.5 - Dartmouth (Tuck)
13.5 - NYU (Stern)
13.5 - Texas (McCombs)

15.0 - UCLA (Anderson)

16.5 - Carnegie Mellon (Tepper)
17.0 - Virginia (Darden)
17.5 - Cornell (Johnson)

21.5 - UNC (Kenan-Flagler)
21.5 - Emory (Goizueta)

.........

Ranked in top 25 in the diversity ranking above, but not in the retrospective top 20, shown in descending order of their diversity rank:

7 - USC (Marshall)
17 - Indiana (Kelley)
21 - Washington (Foster)
22 - Rice (Jones)
25 - Georgetown (McDonough)

bb · Answer

I am still digesting this post. Thank you. I am wondering... what does it mean for an enterprising applicant. Can one target specific schools based on their diversity background (e.g. boring ordinary guys like me targeting less diverse schools and vice versa).

<snip>

Another question, a dumb one probably, what are the benefits of the diversity? What are the underlying assumptions? Should one aspire to be a part of a more diverse program? What would they be losing out on if they choose a less so one?

PS. Very interesting about Marshall. I underestimated their strategy. Not bad at all for a school without a dean for most of 2019.

Posted from my mobile device

unraveled · Answer

Regenerate
Awesome work man. Your 20 years rankings summarizing post was also great - hit a bulleye. Both the posts are worth the read may be many times. After a long time something worth reading and considerable for future references. Do you normally approach things in life or is it COVID19 getting best out of you..

I might just pass through the content and note few point which i might be looking for but the way you have done your analysis in both the post it's awesome - it makes you think.

Well done.

I might just pass through the content and note few point which i might be looking for but the way you have done your analysis in both the post it's awesome - it makes you think. Well done.

Regenerate · Answer

There are arbitrages all around us. Nearly measureless opportunities to extract value for us ... especially if another doesn’t see value in the same way as you (or me).

I can see where an applicant might value the traditional measures of diversity, and lean into hat.

I can see an applicant strong in an area use that to their advantage in their applications (I.e., emphasize work experience to schools with a cohort light in WE ... or ... alternatively, say like at Kelley with their greater WE than many other schools, an applicant with a lower GPA and / or GMAT might do well to look at schools who obviously emphasize WE more than other top schools. If you’ve got a 3.2 and a 620 but 8 yrs of WE, look at Kelley if you really want a top 25 MBA.

The benefits of diversity in an academic setting are highly correlated with one’s planned vocation.

For example, if my son is successful making a living throwing fastballs and sliders for the Cubs, how much does he need to know of the Dutch masters, the architecture of Frank Gehry, or Asian history in order for him to do his job?

If someone is going to do strategy consulting, CPG, etc., I would think diversity at their MBA destination would be more important than if they were going to sit at a quant station trading esoteric financial derivatives.

IMO, most of this was set in stone before the vacancy ... check back in a couple of years and see if it holds up or if it’s just window dressing.

Regenerate · Answer

Thank you! I enjoy deconstructing gumbo and communicating what I find to others. This is how I approach life ... I think this way.

. It has nothing to do with COVID-19. There is ALWAYS enormous value to extract from a situation ... especially if another values things differently. ... the arbitrage inherent in life ...

bb · Answer

At the risk of running this discussion in the completely wrong direction, I am going to cautiously share this review... this is what I used to think of someone who is TRULY diverse: https://gmatclub.com/reviews/comments/s ... -345347474 but I think I was stereotyping and someone with a low GPA or low GMAT score but otherwise awesome profile could be diverse....

Now... I don’t know where this person went, though based on the chart, likely Stanford

...

Posted from my mobile device

... Posted from my mobile device

Kurtosis · Answer

This is awesome work,  Regenerate

unraveled · Answer

The last line shows why there is an essence of wisdom in your two posts.

Just now i completed reading the original post. So, have you calculated weighted average or simply weighed them equally and averaged. Are the subsets also weighed OR otherwise. I believe weighted average would do justice as you also mentioned balance diversity but that would create head-spinning complexities. 
As this post is about diversity and not knowing nothing about how B-Schools approach it, putting international students in one basket also not justified(may be this is an assumption and it may look biased on my side - please enlighten). India is known for its cultural diversity but it becomes a single entity when Indian students apply otherwise the GMAT scores should not have been relatively high compared to other students from other countries - may be i'm wrong here to say that since appliants from China do have a high score. 
Or is it just that schools prioritize academics/countries/etc. ?

Regenerate · Answer

In my personal situation, I care about the first and third types of diversity much more than the second ... and probably would personally weight the first type of diversity as being 2x as important as the 3rd. So,  IF  I totally discarded the second type of diversity, focused on the first (at a 2x weighting of the third score), my top 25 would look like this (with the weighted score next to the rank so you can see the tiering):

Tier 1 
#1 -- 100.0 -- Stanford - (100.0 x2 / 100.0)
#2 -- 97.8 -- Wharton - (99.2 x 2 / 94.9)

Tier 2 
#3 -- 90.2 -- Columbia - (86.9 x 2 / 96.9) ... a bit of a noticeable jump ...

Tier 3 
#4 -- 82.0 -- Michigan (Ross) - (90.9 x2 / 64.3) ... big jump in MY criteria ... maybe I should pay attention ...
#5 -- 79.6 -- Harvard - (78.9 x 2 / 80.9)
#6t -- 79.1 -- Northwestern (Kellogg) - (83.1 x 2 / 71.0)
#6t -- 79.1 -- Texas (McCombs) - (90.7 x 2 / 55.8) ... big jump ...
#8 -- 77.6 -- MIT (Sloan) - (77.3 x2 / 78.2)

Tier 4 
#9 -- 73.6 -- Berkeley (Haas) - (86.0 x 2 / 59.6)
#10 -- 71.0 -- Duke (Fuqua) - (75.9 x 2 / 61.1)
#11 -- 69.1 -- Indiana (Kelley) - (80.8 x 2 / 45.6) ... big jump ...
#12 -- 68.4 -- USC (Marshall) - (64.1 x 2 / 77.0) ... big jump ...
#13 -- 68.3 -- NYU (Stern) - (77.2 x 2 / 50.4)
#14 -- 67.7 -- Chicago (Booth) - (69.2 X2 / 64.8) ... big drop ... maybe I should pay attention ...

Tier 5 
#15 -- 60.0 -- Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) - (65.4 x2 / 49.2)

Tier 6
 #16 -- 54.2 -- Cornell (Johnson) - (59.1 x 2 / 44.4)
#17 -- 50.1 -- Yale SOM - (36.3 / 95.4 / 77.8) ... Yale is a really good school, but it may not be for me ...
#18 -- 47.5 -- UCLA (Anderson) - (46.8 X 2 / 48.8)

Tier 7 
#19 -- 41.8 -- Emory (Guizueta) - (41.4 x 2 / 42.5)
#20 -- 41.5 -- Virginia (Darden) - (34.5 / 30.5 / 55.4)

Tier 8 
#21 -- 37.4 -- UNC (Kenan-Flagler) - (56.1 x 2 / 0.0)
#22 -- 34.1 -- Washington (Foster) - (32.6 x2 / 37.0)

Tier 9 
#23 -- 30.6 -- Rice (Jones) - (12.0 x 2 / 67.8)
#24 -- 28.3 -- Dartmouth (Tuck) - (17.3 x 2 / 50.2) ... another good school that may not be a good fit for me ...

Tier 10 
#25 -- 9.0 -- Georgetown (McDonough) - (0.0 X 2 / 27.1)

............

So, based on another theory of mine that all other MBA offerings from a school will largely mirror the qualities of the main program, and I would be well served to look at OMBA offerings due to my personal circumstances, I should focus on Ross ... with Kelley and Marshall next ... then Tepper ... and Kenan-Flagler last.

Now, because it’s possible the admissions offices at Kelley and UNC see themselves more similarly than me, there may be an arbitrage of sorts in extracting maximum financial aid from Kelley if both schools admitted me ... because all else being equal, I’d pick Kelley over UNC for MY purposes ... As a result, I’d be more likely to apply to UNC than Tepper (if I had to choose).

... except I am interested in consulting and there’s not as much consulting recruiting at Kelley as there is at UNC ... so ... I would need to take that into consideration ...

... but this has given me a shortcut to a short list of schools that are more likely worth MY time based on MY criteria and based on MY priorities ... and ... it’s given me a few schools to potentially steer away from (the odds of a disappointment in my experience v expectations (which is partly influenced by the main rankings) is high ... and I don’t want to invest in a quarter million dollar disappointment).

... or maybe consider if I were looking at EMBA programs ... let’s say I apply to and get into both Kellogg and McCombs ... I suspect McCombs would be more likely to fork over some financial aid due to the perceived ranking differential ... yet (without factoring in career services or total program costs, including travel) ... per this ranking, the both tied for 6th ... I can maybe get a functionally equivalent school based on MY criteria much more cheaply.

Arbitrage.

PS - Be wary of all arbitrage. What you see might not be real. Look at the issue from many perspectives. Be creative. Keep deeply personal reasons and foundational financial issues at the front of your mind when imagining scenarios to test.

Regenerate · Answer

Thank you.

Not sure I follow ...

There is quite a bit that went into each the three scores ... standardized ... averaged ... proportions ... etc ...

However, in the list in the top of the thread is a simple average of the three scores.

The item you identified is exactly the reason for the post ... the offensive (to me) of lumping everyone from the same country or continent in the same group ... and assuming all women provide the same opinion ... and ... and ... and ...

It drives me nuts. The publicly available information is limited. I did what I could with what I had available.

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