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souvik101990
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US News 2021 MBA Rankings Are Out - GSB and Wharton are #1, HBS is #6 17 Mar 2020, 15:23
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Why the drop for Harvard and MIT and the rise of Kellogg and Booth?? Also, I'm impressed with Stern climbing into 10th!! Great job for them. All in all, too many ties for me. Remember to also take the rankings with a pinch of salt because marketing and lobbying goes into it as well
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Ties are annoying because it is a sort of a cop out. I will say that the band of Tuck/Duke/Ross/Stern/Darden will keep on interchanging without much reasoning. HBS going to 6 is a joke.
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US News 2021 MBA Rankings Are Out - GSB and Wharton are #1, HBS is #6 17 Mar 2020, 17:33
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In my opinion the metric did not change for Tuck but it changed for other schools. While I may not be an expert, but I feel that the following factors may have impacted the ranking
1. Other schools did significantly better than their previous years with their employment reports.
2. Kellogg, Wharton, and Yale have new deans, these schools have shown gender and racial diversity in selecting their dean - in the business world, diversity is highly regarded (Columbia also has a new dean).
3. The other schools may have had a higher # of research papers published
Feel free to DM if you have specific questions

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Ok thanks for sharing your thoughts.
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In my opinion, with SOM boasting a higher avg GPA than Tuck (3.66 vs 3.52) almost the same GMAT (722 vs 723) and lower acceptance rate (25% vs 34%, calculated with stats provided on US News) it has overtaken Tuck in prominence. Haas has also been remarkably consistent. I would consider the 3 to join the M7 as T10. Tuck being in 10th place (for now =] ).
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US News 2021 MBA Rankings Are Out - GSB and Wharton are #1, HBS is #6 17 Mar 2020, 17:40
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Yale has always had higher applicant volume and lower acceptance rate as the result. It benefits from the strong undergraduate and law school fame. This has been the case for the last 10 years that I’ve been tracking it.

You can’t just look at the acceptance rate without further background. If you look at Stanford their enrollment is about 400 and Wharton’s is over 800. It would not be reasonable to expect that twice as many people would apply to Wharton than Stanford. Therefore acceptance rate has to be reconciled with the class-size and external factors such as Yale‘s name recognition. Other schools were strong name recognition would be Notre Dame and John Hopkins. If you look at their stats you will probably see lower acceptance rates than peers....

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US News 2021 MBA Rankings Are Out - GSB and Wharton are #1, HBS is #6 17 Mar 2020, 17:49
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.....Therefore acceptance rate has to be reconciled with the class-size and external factors such as Yale‘s name recognition.... If you look at their stats you will probably see lower acceptance rates than peers....

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That’s a solid argument.
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US News 2021 MBA Rankings Are Out - GSB and Wharton are #1, HBS is #6 17 Mar 2020, 18:49
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Something to point out is that acceptance rate only accounts for 1.25% of the ranking. This was pretty surprising to me, but an indicator that swings are less likely related to increases/decreases in this metric.
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US News 2021 MBA Rankings Are Out - GSB and Wharton are #1, HBS is #6 17 Mar 2020, 21:54
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Yale has always had higher applicant volume and lower acceptance rate as the result. It benefits from the strong undergraduate and law school fame. This has been the case for the last 10 years that I’ve been tracking it.

You can’t just look at the acceptance rate without further background. If you look at Stanford their enrollment is about 400 and Wharton’s is over 800. It would not be reasonable to expect that twice as many people would apply to Wharton than Stanford. Therefore acceptance rate has to be reconciled with the class-size and external factors such as Yale‘s name recognition. Other schools were strong name recognition would be Notre Dame and John Hopkins. If you look at their stats you will probably see lower acceptance rates than peers....

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BTW how good is the Johns Hopkins MBA program from an 'insider's' view as opposed to what the rankings say?
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US News 2021 MBA Rankings Are Out - GSB and Wharton are #1, HBS is #6 17 Mar 2020, 21:55
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souvik101990
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Why the drop for Harvard and MIT and the rise of Kellogg and Booth?? Also, I'm impressed with Stern climbing into 10th!! Great job for them. All in all, too many ties for me. Remember to also take the rankings with a pinch of salt because marketing and lobbying goes into it as well

Ties are annoying because it is a sort of a cop out. I will say that the band of Tuck/Duke/Ross/Stern/Darden will keep on interchanging without much reasoning. HBS going to 6 is a joke.
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Definitely a joke....lowest ranking ever :roll: ...
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US News 2021 MBA Rankings Are Out - GSB and Wharton are #1, HBS is #6 17 Mar 2020, 21:59
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BTW how good is the Johns Hopkins MBA program from an 'insider's' view as opposed to what the rankings say?
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We have three reviews by current students or those who are current students when they read the reviews. It seems OK but reviews are really difficult to write since nobody has gone to multiple schools and it’s all about expectations.

Here you go: https://gmatclub.com/reviews/business_school/carey-94

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US News 2021 MBA Rankings Are Out - GSB and Wharton are #1, HBS is #6 18 Mar 2020, 06:11
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Minus HBS I think the rankings are accurate (would be more fair to insert as a tie for 1st or 3rd). Was surprised to see Wharton hold onto #1, but I think it is deserved.
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Hah! I knew someone would say this but I still think Kellogg has some way to go to be with HSW and makes sense to be with Booth, although Booth has a slight edge given that Kellogg's finance concentration isnt as well regarded.
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US News 2021 MBA Rankings Are Out - GSB and Wharton are #1, HBS is #6 19 Mar 2020, 13:40
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Interesting! Carlson! That program stands out because it has a fairly low proportion of the international students. Only 19% off the roughly 90 enrolled students in the full-time program. I guess the impact of the immigration policies may have helped besides whatever else they’re doing right....

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I think the program has just been undervalued for a while. It has a great geographic location advantage as Minneapolis is a top 6 metro area for the number of companies headquartered there and has a far smaller population than the other cities it can be compared to numbers-wise.
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US News 2021 MBA Rankings Are Out - GSB and Wharton are #1, HBS is #6 19 Mar 2020, 16:36
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Carlson's rise may be because of the location, but I am highly skeptical of these see-saws. People were not happy when I said there's no way Ross will be #7 two years in a row and guess what it fell! Some schools do fare better than others but I have a feeling that the top 8-13 interchanges frequently and probably same for the top 15-20.

I am happy for Foster though. I have been tracking that school for a while. Good on them.
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US News 2021 MBA Rankings Are Out - GSB and Wharton are #1, HBS is #6 20 Mar 2020, 06:47
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What do you guys think about Darden slowly climbing up closer to top 10 every year. I see a lot of mixed reviews for Darden. Some really love it and some think its over hyped.
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US News 2021 MBA Rankings Are Out - GSB and Wharton are #1, HBS is #6 20 Mar 2020, 07:15
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UVA - It’s a great school for consulting careers, but I would think that overall Duke and Michigan have a better reputation and Tuck definitely has better opportunities for consulting (probably to do with BCG, Bain being based out of Boston).
In terms of geography, Detroit (I spent a couple of months in auburn hills/Troy area before this coronavirus outbreak) and RDU (I have consulted in the Raleigh area for some finance companies) have more to offer than Charlottesville.
So I would take this ranking with a grain of salt, I’ll prefer a Duke, Michigan over UVA

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US News 2021 MBA Rankings Are Out - GSB and Wharton are #1, HBS is #6 20 Mar 2020, 15:52
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With this week’s release of the 2021 US News and World Report’s Best Business School Guide, MBA rankings are top of mind for all MBA hopefuls. Personal MBA Coach would like to share our thoughts on the latest rankings.

Before I cover this year’s big changes, I would like to remind everyone of one of the most important things to keep in mind when evaluating rankings: Average ranking over time is much more important than year to year fluctuation.

So, what changed this year? A lot!

2021 Full-Time MBA Rankings:

I am proud to say that once again, my alma mater, Wharton, secured the #1 position, this year sharing the honor with Stanford GSB. Wharton has earned the #1 spot for three out of the past four years. For Stanford GSB, this 1st place finish is a jump from 2nd in 2020 and 4th in 2019. Chicago Booth and Kellogg shared 3rd place this year, a considerable increase for Kellogg, which placed 6th last year. MIT Sloan rounded out the top 5.

However, the big news for this season is Harvard Business School’s drop from 3rd to 6th place. This is the lowest ever finish for HBS, which finished 1st place just two years ago.

Berkeley Haas fell slightly from 6th to 7th place. Columbia Business School also fell this year, from 6th to 8th. Once again, Yale SOM finished 9th and NYU Stern joined the top 10 this year, up from a shared 12th place ranking last year.

Duke Fuqua and Michigan Ross, who shared the #10 position last year, were excluded from this year’s top 10, instead sharing 12th place along with Dartmouth Tuck. UVA Darden jumped one place from 12th to 11th.

Cornell Johnson, UCLA Anderson, USC Marshall, Texas McCombs, Carnegie Mellon Tepper, UNC Kenan-Flagler & Washington Foster rounded out the top 21, in that order with a tie for the 20th position.

One should not lose sleep over the fact that HBS is #6 this year, nor do we recommend that every client now apply to Wharton because of its top ranking. As we opened with, the changes over time are most important and these rankings vary from year to year and guide to guide. However, the continued shuffling at the top, along with HBS’s drop for the second year in a row, demonstrates the increasing competition amongst elite business schools. The average GMAT score range between the top 10 schools was just 13 points (from 721 to 734). Similarly, there was minimal variation in average GPA, ranging from only 3.5 to 3.7. The extremely narrow windows between top programs is causing the increased shuffling at the top.

There are no longer just a few top programs to consider and the older thinking is starting to fall by the wayside. Many applicants are now looking beyond the infamous Harvard, Stanford and Wharton trio and are even thinking broader than the M7. My average client applies to five or more programs and with the newly deteriorating market condition, I suspect competition across the entire top 20+ schools will continue to rise, motivating candidates to even further diversify their lists.

Beyond rankings, it is important to look at job placement. You can often land your dream job after graduating from any number of similar schools. Depending on your post-MBA goals, you may also want to pay more attention to some of the specialized rankings that exist. Just because a school is higher ranked overall does not mean that it will do a better job at preparing you for your next job, especially if you are not going for a more standard goal like consulting or banking.

Finally, with the lines blurring between top schools, available financing should be a key consideration. You may be able to secure more substantial funding from one school vs. another: last year my clients earned almost $5M in scholarships (numbers are still coming in). Often you will be better served selecting a school with a slightly lower ranking yet a more favorable financial package. Some M7 schools are very generous with scholarships and others are not.

As a reminder, do not overreact to these new rankings but do keep an open mind to expanding your MBA list.

Need help? Personal MBA Coach is willing to be your guide. Founded by a Wharton and MIT graduate, we regularly help applicants navigate their applications each year. We also conduct mock interviews with former M7 interviewers on our team.

Personal MBA Coach has been guiding candidates through all aspects of the MBA application process for 13 years with a 96% success rate. Call us today at +1 617-645-2424 or email scott@personalmbacoach.com for a free consultation on your profile along with how we can help make your MBA dreams a reality!
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US News 2021 MBA Rankings Are Out - GSB and Wharton are #1, HBS is #6 21 Jun 2020, 09:42
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souvik101990
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Why the drop for Harvard and MIT and the rise of Kellogg and Booth?? Also, I'm impressed with Stern climbing into 10th!! Great job for them. All in all, too many ties for me. Remember to also take the rankings with a pinch of salt because marketing and lobbying goes into it as well

Ties are annoying because it is a sort of a cop out. I will say that the band of Tuck/Duke/Ross/Stern/Darden will keep on interchanging without much reasoning. HBS going to 6 is a joke.
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@bluebook@souvik101990

USN rankings are what developed your expectations. The ranking change of any school isn't a joke but rather the output of their methodology for that year's data. If their methodology is found to be invalid or unreliable, some other ranking will become the primary authority. If not, then USN will continue to develop your expectations, and there's no reason to believe any one program is immune to being perceived differently than they have been historically if their ranking suggests that they should be.
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US News 2021 MBA Rankings Are Out - GSB and Wharton are #1, HBS is #6 10 Feb 2021, 13:53
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I ussually watch to BBC rankings
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US News 2021 MBA Rankings Are Out - GSB and Wharton are #1, HBS is #6 10 Feb 2021, 13:55
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I ussually watch to BBC rankings
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Lol. Funny spam. 😂

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US News 2021 MBA Rankings Are Out - GSB and Wharton are #1, HBS is #6 10 Feb 2021, 14:07
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Do we know if there will be a 2022 USN ranking?

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