Rankings Compilation

Damn,

Columbia is somewhat low ? Time to find other schools to apply to ....

read his conclusion... it's quite interesting how his "felt" rankings matched his excel spreadsheet one.

I am truly wondering why Tuck is always so well regarded and Haas often is not. They're both very small schools with very close and collaborative students, good faculty, and good placement, but Tuck is always talked about being the next Ultra Elite, whereas Haas is not. Just very curious about why Tuck is so good, what makes it better than Haas, and why isn't Haas better? Any Tuck applicants willing to help analyze this?

I'm kind of glad to see Haas being in the top 10 with Jay's methodology, as its rankings have been a roller coaster over the last 4-6 years.

I always think of Tuck as the ultimate in collaborative environments. They have an alumni giving rate that far exceeds any other school - off the top of my head something like 70% compared with about 45% for the next best (Darden if I recall correctly). This could be a result of the cold, remote location, but there's a lot of evidence to suggest that Tuck really has the tightest student body - for those that can bear the cold.

Haas has the advantage of a great location, with proximity to desirable jobs and cultural events. Haas is also really selective, though this is fairly a recent development.

I think another difference between the two schools is that Tuck virtually always leads in average salary and employment statistics, while Haas trails. I do agree that because of location and recent developments, Haas seems to be a school on the move; but from a historical standpoint, Haas has almost always been towards the bottom of the elites. Check out the historical Businessweek and US News rankings. It takes a long time to change perceptions.

thanks pelihu for the insight! Good to learn about the history.

I can see how Tuck students are very close knit and the giving rate is amazing! The cold weather and not much else to do could be a reason though.

Haas is also insanely collaborative, at least all the stories they tell and what every student tells me is so. The problem is Haas is still a public school (they're trying to detach themselves from the public funding and be able to charge private school tuition so they can hire better faculty and have better facilities), and usually public school alumni giving is atrocious... Maybe Haas will change things around with its current trend... that's why I'm willing to go to Haas over almost any other school except for Stanford right now. It's left that good of an impression on me.

Haas is a great school...I also think Tuck, while great, is somewhat overrated. While it might place better on Wall St finance than Haas, most Haas folks want to stay on the West Coast, and Haas places well into any finance job on the west coast.

On the other hand, Haas has some presence (albeit small, but increasing) on the East Coast as well, whereas Tuck is almost non-existent on the West. And internationally, Haas trumps Tuck by far.

Not to mention Haas's strength in Tech/Silicon Valley...Tuck can't compare in that area.

I honestly think Haas should be considered top 8 with M7, while Tuck is probably 9th.

Although for a public university, UC Berkeley has done tremendously well. It is certainly among the most respected universities in the world. Specially anybody who has had anything to do with technology in the past .. is going to be in love with UC Berkeley. My three nearest cubicles are occupied by UC Berkeley undergrads - very interesting and smart people.

Well, the public school part hurts our facilities, alumni giving, and ability to hire top faculty (they keep on defecting to Stanford because the pay is much higher).

But yes, Berkeley has done well for itself being a public university, and the need to survive coupled with an endless variety of things to do definitely make very interesting people

That is about as good a ranking as you will ever find. I mean no one will ever be happy about a ranking over all but that is probably the nearest to reality and perception.

This is a pretty good repackaging of the rankings but there does not seem to be too much news here, at least from my perspective.

While I agree with much of the author's clustering, I disagree on a few key points.

1) Columbia is too low. Columbia is a an intersting case- it is firmly in the UE cluster in some respects such as admissions stat.s but it clearly had some problems in the recent past.

2) UCB/Haas is too high. UCB is one of the best public universities in the world (but then again, many participants in the market for MBA graduates could not care less how the job candidate's program was funded), but it is not appreciably better than the other Elite schools. Darden, for example, has a much stronger placement record among major CEOs. I cannot think of a single CEO of the S&P 500 from Haas, even from the undergrad program. In contrast, I can think of several sitting CEOs in the index from Tuck or Darden. UCB has benefitted from the way that education developed in the western US through extensive public subsidy so it has few serious contenders outside of Stanford (which is in an entirely different class and the only Tycoon U in the region), UCLA, and USC. To be clear, Haas is certainly one of the best MBA programs in the US and I have been happy to help GMATClubbers gain admission there, but I would not put it on the same level as Columbia. From all of the placement data I have reviewed, Haas has traditionally been far weaker than Columbia (even on a per capita basis) when it comes to placements in high prestige industries such as MC and IB. While UCB has a good location for jobs in one of the nation's largest Economic Areas, Columbia can top this with an even larger economic area. While UCB is clearly the second best school in a smaller Economic Area, Columbia is clearly the best in its larger Economic Area. Of course, reasonable minds are welcome to differ.

Interesting analysis Hjort. Though based on your observation, having CEO's and placement statistics are the two most important factors in the way you rank schools, especially placement in MC and IB.

I'm not sure I agree entirely, since West Coast schools do have an inherent disadvantage when it comes to placing in MC and IB compared to schools in the NYC and Chicago areas, just because those jobs aren't as "popular" out here. Similar to someone searching for a business job in the tech industry in the Northeast or Midwest, an IB/MC person wouldn't think of LA or SF as the first place for them to go. Berkeley has roughly 25% going to each of Finance, Consulting, and Tech, whereas Columbia is up to 75% to Finance+Consultin, and only 5.6% Tech. You are right in that in general, people go to B-school to go into the financial/consulting business, but is that the best way to rank what an MBA can do for you? As a person who wants to go into management of tech or anything in the tech industry, Berkeley is clearly at a higher level in terms of placement, and I would even argue education, than Columbia. Why do I bring this up? Because of what people generally say about "if you get into a UE, you better have a good reason to choose an Elite school over it". With MIT and the other top 6 I would consider going to UEs instead of Berkeley (if I get into the UEs), but with Columbia, it would be an easy decision to choose Berkeley (no offense to Columbia applicants and admits) because of the tech specialty.

Yes, Sloan is out there on the East Coast and very good at tech placement, but then again, it's MIT, and I would never debate that Berkeley is better than MIT in rankings or technical education/placement, whether in engineering or business.

As for CEOs, I don't know enough about Columbia CEOs, but your statement of "I cannot think of a single CEO of the S&P 500 from Haas" is false. While there may not be as many CEO's "per capita" as Columbia, you have Paul Otellini as the CEO of Intel, Shantanu Narayen as the President and COO (2nd in command) of Adobe, and Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone Group Plc in London.

Yes, that could be it for Berkeley, but having a CEO/COO at those three major companies is a far cry from having none at all.

While I'm not really arguing that Berkeley is superior to Columbia, but from what I've recently seen, I would not consider Columbia to be "firmly" in the UE anymore, and that schools like Tuck and Berkeley are "catching" up. But then again, I fully admit that this is just by "feel" and also looking at things with a tech/anti-finance-consulting bias.

I agree that Columbia should be higher as well. They had a guy from Forbes last night on CNBC explaining their ranking and how why Tuck was ranked #1. His explanation was Tuck can provide a higher return on investment for a student who doesn’t have the opportunity to go to a better school.

I checked the tuition for both Columbia and Tuck and Columbia is higher by $400. When you consider fees and room and board they are still within a couple thousand. Columbia however does clearly better for employment placement. While median salaries are only marginally higher the ranges tell a different story. The upper range for all industries at tuck is $150k, whereas at Columbia, the upper range for several industries is $575k, $300k, $250k etc. The only way to make those salaries after graduation is to have good experience going in.

This indicates to me that while they are both good schools Columbia is taking in more competitive people than Tuck. So if the schools cost the same and Columbia graduates people with slightly higher salaries the only way for the ROI for Tuck to be higher is if they admit people with lower incomes. That way their salary growth will be higher and their forgone salary during b-school will be lower. So if you have a lower salary and cannot get into Columbia, Tuck is a good school to look at. It's slightly less money and will probably get you the same salary as Columbia with similar work experience. This is all good information to know but I fail to see how this alone makes Tuck a better school than Harvard, Wharton, Columbia, etc.

gixxer, where do you find all the salary range information? I've only seen salary medians and means...

Thanks!

You can usually find them when you download the PDF of the employment statistics. It goes into alot more detail then the html version. The ranges really help to put a lot in perspective. For example while some schools may have a median of 100k for an industry the bottom of the range can sometime reach as low as 50k (How are these people paying back their school loans?). Because I'm a career swithcer I assume that in most cases the people toward the upper end of the range have a lot of previous work experience. The range IBanking is 80-300k, but the median is only 125k. I would assume an associate with no experience and an average internship to be close to the 80k and the associate who took their undergrad at Wharton and worked as and analyst at GS on the best funds to be closer to the 300k.

Salary ranges
IBanking
Tuck: 90k-113k
Columbia: 80-300k
Wharton: 58k-150

Consulting
Tuck: 75k-135k
Columbia: 90k-175k
Wharton: 74k-200k

Real Estate
Tuck: 90k-105
Columbia: 80k-250k
Wharton: 75k -170k

Note: This is in no way an attack on Tuck. All of these school are outstanding institutions and good salary can be achieved at all them. The focus should be a school where you'll feel comfortable. I just think it's a little irresponsible of Forbes to post a ranking which to me was done clearly to be different and attrack attention.

Wow, that's another reason to look at all parts of a school instead of just one aspect. Based on those ranges, except for Consulting, one would argue that Columbia is BETTER than Wharton because of a higher pay range! I doubt too many people would be able to swallow that.

One question about the salary range: is the range reflective of the middle 80%, like GMAT scores, or is it an absolute range?

I'm going to guess it's an absolute range. I can't imagine having to make 300k to beat 80% of you CBS classmates.

If it's an absolute range then I wouldn't pay any attention to it since it doesn't account for distribution. In that case looking at the medium would be much more useful.