I am going to a Top-N school

Question

Shamelessly copied from a BW post:

Here's what I've noticed on this board . . .

 * When someone says they went to a "Top-20" school - that means that their school is "ranked"* ~17-22.
 * When someone says they went to a "Top-15" school - that means their school is "ranked" 12-17.
 * When someone says they went to a "Top-10" school - that means their school is "ranked" 8-12.
 * When someone says they went to an "M7" school, that means they went to Columbia
 * When someone says they went to a "Top-5" school, that means they went to Sloan, Kellogg, or Chicago
 * When someone says they went to a "Top-3" school, they went to Wharton.
 * When someone says they went to the top business school, it could be HBS or S.

*When I say "ranked", I'm probably thinking of a reputation based ranking system closest to USNews or Rankinggod. I make no judgement as to the value or validity of such a ranking system.

dabots · Answer

i saw that this morning too. pretty spot on

paddyboy · Answer

Yeah.

Like when you get a brochure claiming a school is in the top 20 and find that its ranked 20th...

rhyme · Answer

hah.

gmatclb · Answer

ONE of the best schools....

This actually means the least of the best schools.

haddy74 · Answer

SPOT ON... :-D

dukes · Answer

Saw that too. He's actually being quite generous. I've been around people who will stretch their school's ranking far beyond the examples given above.

pelihu · Answer

Yeah, but it doesn't just apply to school rankings. I think pretty much every business (and person) in a competitive industry makes such claims.

We will no doubt get a taste of it when we get into our marketing classes this year. Also, it's a running joke that investment banks are always able to structure the stats in their pitch books to show that the bank in question is a leader in the type of deal being considered. "We're the #1 bank for bond type XXX with values between $100mm and $102mmm issued between 3/1 & 3/10 of last year." :lol:

kidderek · Answer

Good analysis

Hjort · Answer

It is funny how schools do this. One that always annoyed me was the comment that a certain school as in the "top 10" of MBA programs at public schools. This always struck we as rather meaningless qualification- why should students really care whether your school's funding comes directly from the government?

To be fair to the schools, however, reputations really do tend to cluster to some extent. For example, at the undergrad level it is virtually impossible to say which of HYP is the strongest (although I've always sided with Princeton). Each can fairly say that it is the #1 school in the US and and each can alternatively say that it ranks in the top 3 virtually every year (Not overplay the trinity allusion, but they can say that they are both one and three at the same time-fascinating). 

Further, while this will probably change with time, if one had to pick between HBS and Stanford as "the" top business school when speaking to a general audience, HBS would almost certainly be the more credible choice.

lepium · Answer

Another issue is that the figures don't add up. 

The M7 are defined, so no problem there, but then you have: 

- About 15 schools claiming to be top 10 (the M7 plus most of the elites).
- About 30 schools claiming to be top 20.
- About 40 - 50 schools claiming to be top 30. 
- About 80 - 100 schools claiming to be top 50.

And it goes further with European schools. Since they don't have to live with a precise number and since they usually claim to be international, most schools in Europe will claim: Top international school in  . While the statement would be appropriate for a handful of schools, the number of schools claiming the status can be as high as 50. 

But my personal favorite is ISB. In the marketing materials they sent me, they claimed: top 10 school worldwide in average GMAT (or something similar) and went on comparing ISB (if I recall correctly) to Kellogg and Wharton, based on nothing more than the average GMAT.

Note: The above is based on marketing materials I got from the schools, stuff I read at boards and my biased perception. I do not intend to mock any organization or offend anyone, I'm just commenting on the marketing spin to which schools usually resort.

L.

paddyboy · Answer

Can you post that material here or PM me?! I'm shocked!

Ozmba · Answer

Disclaimer for every post!!

Wanna be politically correct alwayz

lepium · Answer

Sorry, that one was paper based. 
L.

I am going to a Top-N school

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