I am going to a Top-N school

hah.

ONE of the best schools....

This actually means the least of the best schools.

SPOT ON...

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.

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."

Good analysis

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.

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 [insert European city here]. 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.

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

Disclaimer for every post!! Wanna be politically correct alwayz

Sorry, that one was paper based.
L.