<p>On March 8, BW will be releasing its second BBA ranking after releasing its first ranking last year. I wonder why they are making the BBA rankings annual and the MBA rankings once every two years.</p>
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[quote]
annual and the MBA rankings once every two years.
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To take advantage of the fact that high schoolers mindlessly follow rankings whereas MBA candidates don't? hehe (No, Really; I think that's why)</p>
<p>we better see some big changes from last year's ranking.</p>
<p>Ah, Alexandre wonders? :P</p>
<p>Giving me lip are you...Poil de Carotte! Hehe!!!</p>
<p>Well, I expect to see a significant drop for Emory, Notre Dame and BYU and a significant improvement for Cal, Cornell and CMU. Otherwise, the rankings shouldn't change that much.</p>
<p>What do you think is business week’s undergraduate b-school ranking more reasonable than US news best undergraduate business school ranking?</p>
<p>Usnews relies purely on a peer assessment. Businessweek uses more statistics to evaluate the programs. I still don't think it's as "correct" as the usnews rankings, at least when it comes to school prestige.</p>
<p>alexandre,
Which do you think are the more accurate rankings-BW or USNWR?</p>
<p>When it comes to Business rankings, I prefer BW's approach. I think it places more emphasis on corporate sentiment and graduate preparedness and that's what an Business degree is all about.</p>
<p>I would agree with your thoughts on corporate involvement and could see how such an approach might be an effective and informative supplement to the currently existing Peer Assessment scoring by USNWR. Clearly, academic assessments have some role to play in college evaluations and rankings, but IMO it probably should not be exclusive. As employers have a large stake in the outcome (ie, the prepardness of the student to succeed in the business world), it would seem that taking their sentiments into account would make sense.</p>
<p>I would love a ranking that takes corporate sentiment into consideration. Obviously, corporate sentiment plays a more significant role in professional disciplines such as Engineering, Business, Nursing etc... For those professional disciplines, I think corporate sentiment should weigh more than peer assessment score. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I don't think corporate opinion should play as large a role when evaluating colleges of Arts and Science. Still, in terms of overall weight, if there were a way to accurately capture a university's "corporate assessment score", I would give it a significant weight in the overall formula...perhaps as high a rating as the peer assessment score. </p>
<p>It can be done I suppose. Perhaps by approaching the major players accross industries (manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, biotech, info-tech, high-tech, aerospace, investment banking, management consulting, telecom, entertainment, financial, advertsing etc...) and accross the nation (California, Northwest, Southwest, Great Plains, Midwest, South, Southeast, Mid Atlantic, NY and New England). I think rather than rely purely on sentiment, those companies can also come up with exact numbers hired from each university on an annual basis, thereby giving the final corporate assessment score some statistical integrity.</p>
<p>Alexandre,
I agree with many of these thoughts on corporate opinions as part of the assessment process. My only substantive difference relates to your comment about limiting this and not involving a college's Arts & Sciences grads (which for most colleges represents the largest number of students and often by a good margin). A large number of these A&S students go on to positions in industries that you list. I agree strongly with your suggestion about getting more regional data and, if possible, company-specific data. This would be of great importance to all of us and would give us the ability to really evaluate any school's reach into certain industries and geographies.</p>
<p>The WSJ MBA rankings seem to be based on corporate opinion, but I always found them to be the least reliable. What do you guys think?</p>
<p>redhare,
The only rankings that I have analyzed in any great detail is the granddaddy, USNWR, and then only the undergrad rankings, but I would assume that they follow the same methodology with their grad approach (someone correct me if I'm wrong). I have a passing knowledge of the others, including WSJ and BW. My understanding is that, unlike USNWR, WSJ and BW take into consideration (and weight rather heavily) corporate recruiters' view of a school as well as the opinions of current & former students. As a result, some unexpected schools can do very well. For example, the MBA programs at Northwestern and Dartmouth reputedly have truly outstanding relations with recruiters. These schools do very well in BW and WSJ (although I don't know specifics as I'm working from memory). By comparison, these two schools (and particularly Dartmouth) don't rank nearly as well in the USNWR MBA rankings which give weight to Peer Assessment. The bigger, more traditional names (Harvard, Wharton, Stanford) get most of the glory here. So, in simplest terms, I guess it comes down to whose opinion do you trust more-corporate recruiters and current/former students on one side or academics on the other side? It's probably not that stark, but you get the idea.</p>
<p>Hawkette, I would love to see a corporate assessment score incorporated in the overall ranking of undergraduate institutions, and like I said above, it should count almost as much, if not entirely as much as the peer assessment score. I think people will be amazed how much the corporate assessment score would mirror the peer assessment score.</p>
<p>Redhare, the WSJ is indeed essentially a corporate ranking. However, it is very unreliable. Dartmouth's TucK and CMU's Tepper have been ranked #1 when other, better MBA programs like Harvard, Stanford, Sloan and Chicago have struggled to make the top 10. I think the companies are ranking which MBA programs are the best to deal with, not which MBA programs are the best.</p>
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[quote]
Redhare, the WSJ is indeed essentially a corporate ranking. However, it is very unreliable. Dartmouth's TucK and CMU's Tepper have been ranked #1 when other, better MBA programs like Harvard, Stanford, Sloan and Chicago have struggled to make the top 10. I think the companies are ranking which MBA programs are the best to deal with, not which MBA programs are the best.
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You also have to remember that the WSJ doesn't incorporate the fact that different schools have different recruiters that give the opinion of the school. For example, the recruiters giving opinions about Harvard would be elite (GS, Blackstone, etc) as compared to the recruiters at less-prestigious schools.</p>
<ol>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>NYC</li>
<li>BYU</li>
<li>Notre Dame</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Michigan</li>
<li>Emory</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li>BERKELEY (big move up)</li>
<li>UVA</li>
<li>Penn. (obvi)</li>
</ol>
<p>... (10char)</p>
<p>
[quote]
For example, the MBA programs at Northwestern and Dartmouth reputedly have truly outstanding relations with recruiters. These schools do very well in BW and WSJ (although I don't know specifics as I'm working from memory). By comparison, these two schools (and particularly Dartmouth) don't rank nearly as well in the USNWR MBA rankings which give weight to Peer Assessment.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I am really curious -- and dubious -- about corporate recruiting rankings. Leo187um raised one good point: there are different universes of recruiters, so how can the ratings be consistent; if, for instance, you had one rating 5 schools together from Harvard to Columbia let's say and he/she thought Columbia rated 5th behind Harvard, how do they reflect the fact that these are places they choose to recruit at above all others? There are a few other issues: the purpose of the recruiting rank is, I believe, to find out who has the best students for recruiting, is it not? But recruiters are prone to judge schools not at all just in these terms, but for instance, in how the school manages the recruiting process. I have heard from people in the business, for instance, that UChicago does a tremendous job managing the process and that that is an important factor in how it is viewed by recruiters. Also, do recruiters favor large schools overall? I have worked with corporate recruiters who love some of the larger schools because they can go and get a lot of quality product in one place -- this recruiter I spoke with handled Wharton, Stanford, Haas/Berkeley and a couple of others (I forget) and would get more than 10 hires at W, but might be lucky to get less than half at the other schools named here combined (which are both much smaller than W) . What about schools that send more one-offs into start-ups and have a relative, anti-corporate slant?</p>
<p>The corporate recruiting rankings are basically done in a black box. [I guess for that matter peer assessment is too often, but somehow I think that is a more straightforward proposition.] </p>
<p>On the other hand, I realize it makes eminent sense to have the largest and most direct consumer of the schools talking about their products. I just wonder, though.</p>