2008 Businessweek Rankings

College Majors Business Major
21

<p>
[quote]
fyi the usnews rankings dont weigh in many factors...they just consider what other people who have heard of it rank it. businessweek considers many factors so i would say theyre more credible

[/quote]

Yeah, I doubt you've actually read any of this.

[quote]
To rank these programs, BusinessWeek uses nine distinct measures, including surveys of some 80,000 business majors and more than 600 corporate recruiters, the median starting salaries for graduates, and the number of graduates each program sends on to the preeminent MBA programs (we rank those, too, in November every other year). We also calculate an academic quality score for the undergraduate schools by combining SAT scores, faculty-student ratios, class size, the percentage of students with internships, and the number of hours students spend on class work each week.

[/quote]

The opinions of 80,000 majors are irrelevant because they're either going to be heavily biased towards their school if they like it or incredibly bitter if the wanted to go somewhere else. They also, mostly like, have zero experience at other schools, zero contact with other schools, and zero experience actually working in business so they wouldn't even be aware of the outward perception of any school (including theirs). They don't elaborate on what they mean by students sent to preeminent MBA programs--if they mean students going straight into MBA programs, they're probably not preeminent. If they mean students that eventually receive MBAs, giving credit to the undergraduate school is basically complete ********--it's all about work experience and the GMAT. The percentage of internships is also a questionable metric because there is no way to account for quality, and I fail to see how hours spent on classwork correlates to a good program.</p>

<p>There are three problems:
(1) It's impossible to quantify the quality of undergraduate programs down to individual rankings. Groupings, maybe. Counting numbers? Absolutely not. There's barely enough information out there to figure out how good individual graduate programs are, much less undergraduate.
(2) There were huge changes between this year and last year that are unrealistic of what changes could have happened at individual programs, which brings into question the "integrity" of their rankings (assuming these rankings have any integrity).
(3) They give out none of the metrics they used, and given how this is a magazine--which is to say journalists are the people deciding these things--you have to assume their calculations, of which they provide absolutely no information to what the calculations actually were, are inherently flawed.</p>

<p>These problems essentially invalidate these rankings.</p>

22

<p>im not saying theyre perfect....just saying they are more valid than the usnews rankings which are based entirely on reputation</p>

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<p>They're not more valid. The reputation, as measured by the opinions of deans of schools, is a far, far, far better measurement than asking students how they feel about their school. Assuming they are not asked to rank their own institutions, it is also a far better metric than standardized test numbers from high school (which are poor predictors of collegiate success--schoolwork in high school is the most reliable statistic), it's obviously better than seeing who goes into a preeminent MBA program later (a undergraduate institution cannot rightly take credit for this accomplishment by their students after years of working), it's better than going by the percentage of students with internships and it's better than going by the number of hours the student spends working on the course load.</p>

<p>What you're left with as a boon to the BusinessWeek rankings are the opinions of recruiters, the median starting salaries, teacher:student ratio and class size. The issue with the recruiters is that we have no idea who they are and we have no idea what industry they are centralized in--certain schools are going to be better at certain subdisciplines. We also have no idea whether or not they're experienced or reputable, whereas we can assume that the deans of business schools have some idea what it is they're talking about. Median starting salary is fair, as long as it is based on the specific concentration--BusinessWeek does not disclose how they handled that. Teacher:student ratio and class size are things I can't argue with, but I still value the opinion of the people who run these places more than I think the class size and student:teacher ratio is a relevant indicator of the quality of education.</p>

24

<p>
[quote]
Well, you asked what you would choose, so you made it seem like you could get in to UCLA.

[/quote]

yea, but u threw in stanford and berkeley like it was butter! lol</p>

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<p>I absolutely cannot understand how highly respectable and well-regared rograms like Berkeley and Georgetown can fall down so rapidly unless there was some change in their methodolgy. It just comes to show how useless and baseless these rankings are. Although i must say that Businessweek has a wealth of information for those who plan to study business as an undergrad</p>

26

<p>Their ranking methodology: Undergrad</a> Business Program Rankings</p>

<p>
[quote]
There are five sources for the undergraduate ranking: a student survey, a recruiter survey, median starting salaries for graduates, the number of graduates admitted to 35 top MBA programs, and an academic quality measure that consists of SAT/ACT test scores for business majors, full-time faculty-student ratios in the business program, average class size in core business classes, the percentage of business majors with internships, and the number of hours students spend preparing for class each week. The test score, faculty-student ratio, and class size information come from a survey to be completed by participating schools; the internship and hours of preparation data come from the student survey.

[/quote]
</p>

27

<p>Can somebody exaplain to me why Ross received a B for teaching quality?</p>

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<p>UT is now number 10 according to BusinessWeek and 7 in last years US News Ranking....seems like we dont get mentioned enough compared to some of the other schools</p>

29

<p>why has nyu fallen over the years? and why is MIT falling now?</p>

30

<p>I only look at Rutgers and they fell from 32 to 50.</p>

31

<p>Many Ross professors are visiting professors and not full professors, and a good number cannot speak English well. From my experience, Ross professors are half good and half terrible, but the important thing to consider is that the overall quality probably hasn't changed much, if at all, from last year. But according to BW, it did. A+ to a B in one year?</p>

32

<p>Also, where are they getting their surveys from? Perhaps it's just a random sample. All I know is that I haven't been chosen for it, so I wonder who does them.</p>

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<p>Wharton, is it EXTREMLY difficult to get in?</p>

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<p>For those who are interested, here's the [url=<a href="http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/mar2008/bs2008034_344122.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_business+schools%5Dtranscript%5B/url"&gt;http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/mar2008/bs2008034_344122.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_business+schools]transcript[/url&lt;/a&gt;] from a chat by the Business Week editors.</p>

35

<p>
[quote]
Has anything changed/improved at the University of Michigan Business School in the last year? Was the new school building [anticipated to be up in fall, 2008] put into consideration for this year's rankings? </p>

<p>GeoffBW: New buildings and other facilities usually come out in the student responses. We've found that, typically, students are happier when their buildings and classrooms are state-of-the-art. Clearly a school with a brand-new building and lousy professors and career services is not going to fare very well, but it is a big factor.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Is this guy ridiculing Michigan?!?!?</p>

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<p>undergrad b-schools video by businessweek (mostly about NYU)</p>

<p>A-List</a> of B-Schools | Businessweek Video Library</p>

37

<p>Honestly, the rankings can't mean a whole lot is they can change so dramatically in one year. Binghamton from 72 to 40?! </p>

<p>Overall, Binghamton is a great school and I might end up being a student there, but if a school can go up 32 places in a year, there's gotta be something wrong. I don't think they made many major changes to their program...</p>

<p>It's all fun and interesting to read though.</p>

38

<p>Yeah Notre Dame</p>

39

<p>Putting MIT at #9 completely ruins the credibility of their rankings. The only school with an undergrad b-school with recruiting on par with MIT is obviously UPENN.</p>

40

<p>These rankings are sort of a joke, but I'm glad because hopefully people will turn to some of these other schools which are moving up in the rankings.</p>