US News 2024 Business School Rankings (MBA): Corrected Ranking

Question

Hello! I have taken the time to gather the US News 2024 Business School data containing acceptance rate, base salary, employment rate at graduation, and employment rate 3 months after graduation as well as the average GMAT score and average GPA from Menlo Coaching (as I did not purchase the US News Graduate Compass) to improve the 2024 US News Ranking.

The following ranking includes the Top 35 Business Schools ranked by US News and uses the methodology used by US News in 2023, but the peer assessment and recruiter assessment scores have been removed to create a more accurate 2024 Business School Ranking.

The peer assessment score and recruiter scores seem arbitrary and appear to be included in the US News ranking to inflate the ranking of schools that are traditionally high ranked or considered prestigious even if they underperform in crucial categories such as selectivity or employment.

The following weights are equivalent to the US New's 2023 Business School methodology with the peer and recruiter assessment components removed:

Additionally, I have included an excel sheet in which different weights can be input into cells V5:V10 so you can change the weights of categories used by US News depending on which you deem most important for your MBA journey! I hope this can be helpful for others and makes the US News ranking more transparent and less biased.

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bb · Answer

This is great!!!
I’m looking forward to digging into this!

Also pinging  TargetKellogg2024  who also had a very similar idea last year. I’m sure he’ll have some additional comments!

PS. Curious why you removed the pier and recruiter components? Is the feeling that they are inherently flawed?

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GMATGenius! · Answer

Thank you for asking  bb . I know any ranking will inherently be biased, and I found it troublesome how US News changes their methodology each year which can greatly affect the rankings. There is no perfect ranking and there are always schools people will pick because they find them more "prestigious" even if the outcomes might not be as promising.

To me, the peer assessment and recruiter assessment serve as a way to account for how "prestigious" a program may be and keep the rankings more stagnant, which may be important to some people. I made this corrected ranking as a way to more objectively look at the rankings by focusing on the selectivity and outcomes of each program to compare their performance numbers rather than have a large component of the ranking be the opinions of individuals who partake in the US News' surveys. Ultimately, getting a high paying job is generally the main goal of an MBA, so it seems like this should be the main factor in an MBA ranking.

The choice of 35 schools is arbitrary and more schools could be added or removed depending on one's preference.

bb · Answer

Thank you. I think I agree with your methodology and your points. I do realize that once you said parameters for rankings then you have to accept the result because numbers don’t lie but I think many people will struggle with Harvard and Stanford not being in the top 10 🥴 only a smart or thoughtful person would actually dive deeper….

We do have GMAT Club rankings that we created to try to fix the issues that you referencing and so I’m quite familiar with intrinsic challenges.
Link: https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-club-fu ... 28588.html (feedback is very welcome)

One we ran into is that salary data swing drastically depending on where the graduates are finding their jobs. For example, most graduates from a place like Berkeley are getting a job in the bay area, it will be higher than someone getting a job in Texas for example. Then there are jobs that don’t change and salary as much such as consulting jobs and then there are industry jobs that tend to pay more than others and a program that mostly graduates consultants, is going to have a higher pay rate than a program graduating other candidates. Try to count for this, would be a tricky process but possible I guess.

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bb · Answer

Oh, and forgot to add we have tried to put a similar ranking tool (this is for 2023 and not updated with 2024 data) that would allow customizing rankings based on personal qualities:

https://www.interactivecalculator.com/v ... OXD35zWgb7

GMATGenius! · Answer

I agree  bb . It would be difficult to account for the differing salaries by region/job function.

One way that seems better to account for the popularity/prestige aspects accounted for by peer/recruiter assessments would be to compare the yield rates to see which programs students actually prefer and are choosing. I could add that in and users could select whichever weights they desire to account for this.

I will check out the calculator! Sounds interesting!

Edit: Also,  TargetKellogg2024 , I like the ranking you made!! I was merely trying to replicate the US News ranking/improve it so others can weight categories themselves. It would be interesting to go in depth as you have to create a ranking! Looks good!

TargetKellogg2024 · Answer

Hey  GMATGenius! 
I really liked your ranking (personally more so because Kellogg is #2)

The first draft of the ranking that I created looked more or less the same, but I had to change the way I was approaching this. For me, it was very important to factor in both- the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the school in ranking them. The quantitative factors, as you have rightly considered, are the acceptance rate, yield rate, employment rate etc. However, these data points need not necessarily reflect the true value. For example, from my extensive research, I have learnt that though Stanford's reported employment at three months is just 70-80%, it's not because the people are not able to get a job. That's because people do not wanna take up the job that they have received. In fact, one Stanford graduate whose interview I watched mentioned that he got 8 jobs within 3 months of graduation that he didn't accept and therefore, he was reported as one of those remaining 20-30% unemployed students. In a different scenario, I noticed that one specific school has jan average GMAT score of ~730. If you look at this average score superficially, you might consider this school in the same league as the M7s or Top 10. However, when you dive deeper into the other linked factors, you'd know that the school has found their way around US News ranking. They get this average GMAT from just one third of the class who have provided GMAT scores. Rest others were admitted through GRE or test waivers. This brings to another challenge- many business schools have started waiving off the test requirements. This again, needs to be considered while calculating the rankings. There are many other similar challenges with just the quantitative factors and therefore, I think that these factors could be deceptive.

On the other hand, qualitative factors are the same as well. It's almost next to impossible to evaluate and rank the schools in terms of their culture, community, and resources that they offer to their students. We all know that anyone who graduates from the M7 will have all the doors to their preferred career track opened. It is also widely known that Tuck has the best alumni network, even better than the M7s. It is also known that Kellogg has the best marketing department and places a lot (still fewer than in Conulting, Tech, or Finance) in marketing, and their salaries are relatively less. To compensate for these challenges, any many other similar challenges, I thought to consider peer and recruiter assessment scores. Though these assessment scores cannot be trusted at their face value, we are considering them honest because after all, as I mentioned earlier, even the quantitative data points are not completely true.

TargetKellogg2024 · Answer

On a side note, nightblade354 is gonna treat you with nice goodies! Your ranking of Darden would make him a happy boy!

nightblade354 · Answer

Damn straight. These are rankings that are Nightblade approved

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GMATGenius! · Answer

As for Harvard and Stanford, it seems US News was trying to mitigate their drop in ranking due to their underperformances in placement by decreasing the weight of placement at graduation and placement at 3 months after graduation. The entire ranking can be easily manipulated by addiing other factors and changing the weights.

If I was making a ranking, I think yield rate would be important to include as well as a way to account for discrepancies in salary. Unfortunately, this would be a lot of data to go through and it is not easily accessible.

GMATGenius! · Answer

These are all very good points! After some thought, it seems fair that Stanford was penalized when looking solely at employment rate because a larger percentage reported not having jobs. (some things to think about- maybe other schools are underreporting their unemployment but this is the data that was given so not much we can do about that; if it had been a school with a smaller brand name, would we be arguing that employment rate should have a smaller weight in the ranking?)

In that one situation, even though the student had multiple offers, they still do not have paid employment 3 months after their MBA. Was the program not able to help them achieve a job they wanted, or if it was, why did they not accept?

I have a solution that could account for the test optional programs. Let's say a in a ranking that GMAT score is weighted at 0.15 and the average GMAT score across all test takers is ~590. If a program has 100% of the class submit GMATs and the average is a score of 700, then the contribution of this score would be 0.15*700*1. If a program has 50% of their class submit GMATs and the average score is 650, then you could assume that the remaining scores are all the average score of ~590. So the contribution of GMAT for this school would be 0.15*(650*0.5 + 590*0.5). This is just for demonstration. You would still need to normalize the scores and do the same for GRE. This will also change things a lot with the introduction of the new shorter GRE and shorter GMAT where there are scoring differences.

But, yes, you are right. End of the day it is just a ranking. Students should look to see if the program will help them meet their career goals and if the community culture is a fit for them. It is still 2 years of your life, so you want to enjoy the journey! That is a big reason why I chose Team Fuqua! 😝

I'm glad you liked where it put Kellogg and Darden!

bb · Answer

I think the methodology put Kellogg and Darden there

US News 2024 Business School Rankings (MBA): Corrected Ranking

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