Saїd Business School – University of Oxford

Bmillan,

You might take this ranking with a grain of salt. The Economist is one of my favorite publications, but their MBA ranking (EIU) system lacks credibility. Eighty percent of the weight of their ranking comes from unaudited information that the schools provide. And the schools come up with some pretty egregious stuff: For example, if I recall correctly, HEC gives an average salary on exit of $124,000. Hmmm...

You know what they say: garbage in, garbage out. So, IESE gets ranked 1st, Wharton 9th, Vierick Leuven (????) 10th, INSEAD 23rd, Oxford 47th, UCLA 50th, etc, etc.

Unfortunately, I haven't seen an international ranking system that really nails it. Until then, I would recommend that prospective MBA candidates do their homework rather than expect dodgy figures to make the decision easy: figure out why you want an MBA and then talk with prospective employers, look at the (auditable) placement statistics, and speak with the schools. Oxford students land great jobs, and did so even during the worst economy in recent memory (see the link below). That's all that matters to me.

https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/mba-employment- ... efault.htm

-J

Oops. Oxford 42nd. Whatever. Here is my source about EIU.
https://poetsandquants.com/2010/07/10/th ... a-ranking/

Hi bmillan01,

MBA Rankings are like comparing Golf scores on different golf courses. One can't really compare them.

What rankings are good for actually is looking at a single programme and figuring out what are the strengths/weaknesses of the program. So for example, Oxford has great facilities, a diverse student body, but being a young programme (I am in the 14th MBA class - ever), there are relatively few CEOs out there who are SBS alums. Again, using the Golf analogy, the tee shots are good, the putting will improve with practice.

With MBA Rankings being shoddy, I'd also read various careers reports of schools with a grain of salt - SBS included. Remember, careers reports are marketing material. True due diligence of your future school is done by going and talking to people, asking tough questions, and sitting in on real classes (not MBA openday classes).

I know I did, and frankly, I am extremely happy with the Oxford MBA!

Thanks for the replies, buffdaddy and jon82! I certainly share a similar level of suspicion regarding rankings from any publication - The Economist in particular.

With that said, its rankings are too puzzling for me to resist. Even if we recall that 2009 was a disruptive year, and even if we compare the employment statistics of Judge with that of Said, the discrepancy between the two in terms of rankings still doesn't make much sense.

But, as you both stated, this is nothing to lose sleep over. I just couldn't help but express my curiosity with some of their bizarre rankings. I hope that my earlier post didn't suggest anything more than that.

Thanks again!

Hi, I would suggest also the Financial Times 2010 Global MBA ranking: https://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolra ... a-rankings
In my opinion, FT is a consistent and conservative ranking - the placement of schools from year to year don't vary very much, as is the case for EIU MBA ranking, where schools could jump up or down even 20-30 places!

On the basis of 2008 data, Oxford it's on the 18th place, which I would say it's fair, considering both Oxford's strong and weak points.

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