US NEWS 2008 RANKINGS

Urbana-Champagne is ranked higher than ND? Are you kidding me! Look at every single stat including career placement (especially), avg gmat, avg gpa, quality of alumni network- which can be slightly subjective. It almost seems like USnews rank schools by who they "like".

Ok, I guess UC Irvine just fell out of the rankings then. Surprising considering they went up in the last Financial Times rankings. Still waiting on Anderson decision today but most likely Irvine is where I will end up so just wanted to check on it.

Just noticed Wake made an appearance... I always thought that was a top 50 calibar school

It will be interesting to see if these turn out to be legit. I guess they look pretty believable. They definitely got it right starting with Harvard and Stanford.

NYU looks like a big winner, no doubt helped by the record numbers on wall street the last 2 years - although this argument doesn't quite hold water when you see how Columbia is ranked. I wonder why they don't seem to benefit as well.

UCLA looks like the big loser this time. I'd be interested to see the full report to try to figure out what caused their drop. The changes year to year seem to be tied selectivity and placement numbers. Changes in reputation usually take more time to show up in rankings. I wonder if UCLA took at hit in either selectivity or placement. Unfortunately, the data for our application season this year will not show up until later. I'm eager to see if it was in fact a tough year like many of us believe.

Anyhow, I'd say there are no major surprises in the elite/ultra-elite categories. Obviously every school can't be ranked #1, but my initial reaction is that there's nothing at the top of the rankings to make anyone change their thinking at this point.

Are you sure your comparisons are correct from last year? Someone just sent me a screen shot of the 2007 BW rankings and they are different than the ones you put up from 07.

This is the USnews rankings......

Sorry

No prob, I def already screwed this thread up earlier when I transposed the 2007/2008 rankings...but everything is set straight now!

Something that no one has mentioned yet is that for the 2007 rankings
https://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/mba/brief/mbarank_brief.php

the stats (gpa, gmat) are from '05.
I know, in Vanderbilt's case, that the average GMAT has gone up pretty significantly since '05. That probably accounts for most of their jump in ranking.

I definitely agree that these rankings are not good tools to make decisions on.

Very good point. US News relies on old admission data to come up with current rankings, which again calls into question the validity of their assessment.

just went to barnes and noble. Looks like the issue is not out yet. Hopefully itll be out by this weekend so we can get a full read on how they made the rankings for each school

I believe it is scheduled to be out tomorrow 3/30 (or was it 3/31). In any case, it's the next couple of days.

Tomorrow, the 30th is what the email told me.

Its official...

https://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/r ... _brief.php

This takes me to the old rankings...

I clicked on the link a little while ago and I will confirm that the new rankings were posted. It looks like they have since been changed back.

Well, once again, US News rankings are much closer to Hjort's cluster system, which, IMHO, is the closest to a "proper" ranking you can get. I have not checked so much beyond the Trans Elite cluster, but above those, the ranking is pretty close.

So there goes my vote for US News vs. BW (which, IMHO, is BS).

Cheers. L.