<p>I think the ranking is OK (I still can’t understand why is BYU in top 10). But I discovered that some data in Business Week’s ranking is incorrect. For example Bentley in its undergraduate profile (2006) says that there where 698 recruiting opportunities, while in business week’s data it is said that 1440 companies posted full-time job offers for undergraduate business students. It means that half of the companies offered no positions or what? Please correct me if I’m wrong.</p>
<p>BYU is in the Top 10 because there are a lot of talented kids who come out of that program. They are well trained, they are smart, they have great personal attributes, and they know how to work well with other people. I welcome the opportunity to work with graduates of BYU in comparison with graduates from many of the other schools ranked in the top 10. BYU grads are not completely in love with themselves because they went to X school. They go to work and just get the job done. </p>
<p>(And no, I didn't go to BYU, I don't live in Utah, and I am not Mormon).</p>
<p>Although I don't think BYU should be ranked anywhere near the top 10, I agree with Hawkette about the talent level at BYU, primarily because if attracts many highly gifted young mormons.</p>
<p>Anyone have a link to these rankings?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessweek.com%5B/url%5D">www.businessweek.com</a></p>
<p>I read the issue and the rankings.</p>
<p>Depending on the criteria you use, you can come up with very different rankings.</p>
<p>Which firms recruit and where they are located, trumps all other criteria when judging business schools in my opinion.</p>
<p>Or, it is which classes are available and how nice are the facilities. :)</p>
<p>Then it is how good are the sports teams. ;)</p>
<p>The student comments seemed very similar for most of the schools, making them useless.</p>
<p>Business schools are primarily regional, even the top ones. Students who go to schools in the NE tend to end up in jobs in the NE. Students who go to schools in the Midwest end up with jobs in the Midwest, Students who go to schools in the west end up with jobs in the west, etc.</p>
<p>If you want to be an accounting major, you can go practically anywhere. </p>
<p>If you want to work in NY, go to NYU.</p>
<p>I asked a friend of mine who used to work for Goldman Sachs, "How come GS doesn't recruit at your school"?</p>
<p>He said GS couldn't get anyone to leave the area and work for them so they gave up and stopped recruiting at his school.</p>
<p>I don't care how high BYU is ranked. I wouldn't go there.</p>
<p>I wonder how this issue sells. Better than other BW issues? After all, that is what it is all about.</p>
<p>dstark,
IMO, you comments were very insightful (and perhaps more than you realized) and they reinforce the point that I have made elsewhere about job placement. I strongly agree with your statements that, with regard to corporate recruitment, schools are primarily regional. This is not just with business students, but for nearly all undergraduates. True, some schools have stronger national brands (eg, several Ivies, Stanford, Duke) and thus their graduates have an easier time at national placement, but I would place the number of schools with truly national placement for all graduates at fewer than ten. The vast majority of recruiters draw from schools in their region of the country and this is why a company located in the Southwest is more apt to accept a student from U Texas than from Brown or a company in the Mountain West is more receptive to a student from BYU than from Emory or a company in Boston is more receptive to a student from BC than one from UC Berkeley. And it is definitely true that a student attending NYU (even CAS and not just Stern) has a better chance at Wall Street placement than a student coming from somewhere like Georgetown. </p>
<p>As for the rankings and the criteria that they use, corporate recruiters may be the key for you, but they are not for everyone. In your case, you indicate that you care about which recruiters come to your school. I am certain that students in other parts of the country have similar desires, but a different list of "top" corporate recruiters. Yes, there can be a lot of overlap of corporate recruiters across the country (eg, many Wall Street firms, some consulting firms, some major corporate employers like Intel, Microsoft, Lockheed, etc. visit A LOT of schools), but clearly regional industry strengths heavily influence recruiting at colleges. </p>
<p>Further re your statements on rankings, it's not that one ranking system is inherently "better" than another, it is that they often measure different things. The trick is in understanding what they are measuring and trying to understand further how effectively they make that measurement. In my case, I have great difficultly accepting USNWR's rankings because of their heavy weighting of the Peer Assessment scores. No one really knows what the Peer Assessments are saying and we don't know who is doing the measuring, how accurately they measure and on what basis. I don't know how you feel about the worth of the PA scoring, but if you or anyone else are/is a supporter, I hope you will join the discussion on the College Search & Selection thread.</p>
<p>Hawkette, the PA is an imperfect measure. So are SAT scores, alumni giving, size of classes, and all the other stats USNWR uses.</p>
<p>USNWR takes a bunch of statistics that don't measure what goes on in the classroom, puts them together and then, all of a sudden, we can now measure what goes on in the classroom and rank the schools. </p>
<p>It's illogical. It does sell magazines. It's USNWR's best selling magazine. </p>
<p>People have opinions. The statistics and measures that reinforce my opinion are correct and useful.</p>
<p>The ones that don't are incorrect and not useful.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The vast majority of recruiters draw from schools in their region of the country
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Further to this:
-Strong regions tend to correlate well with performance in these rankings, I would imagine.
- For undergrad, I think the regional issue is probably particularly true. Not as much for grad school, at least in the top 10 or 15, maybe more. Significant national recruiting goes on at UChicago, Ross, Haas/Berkeley, UCLA, etc., even if it's for locally based positions. To the first point, for instance, if you want to end up in tech or tech investing, go to Stanford or Berkeley. Recruiters come from other regions for the tech-savvy students in those places, in addition to a lot of the students staying put. </p>
<p>Therefore, I would say that the following is overstated if not wrong, or at least the cut-off is not along the lines or as limited as suggested. Stanford and the Ivies don't generally have undergrad business programs:</p>
<p>
[quote]
True, some schools have stronger national brands (eg, several Ivies, Stanford, Duke) and thus their graduates have an easier time at national placement, but I would place the number of schools with truly national placement for all graduates at fewer than ten.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>dstark,
When someone gives you the SAT scores, the alumni giving info, the size of the classes, etc. you know what they are giving you. These are facts that you as a consumer can weight according to your own needs. I am not telling you how to weight them. </p>
<p>Contrast this with Peer Assessments. We don't know what is being measured, we don't know who responded to the mailing and we don't know what they said. And nowhere is it ever claimed by USNWR or any responder that PAs tell us what goes on in the classroom. I am suggesting to you and all readers to better understand this before accepting PA as a useful indicator for undergraduate college selection. If you believe in PA as a useful tool, I strongly encourage you and others to make your arguments on the previously mentioned PA thread. </p>
<p>As for opinions, I welcome and respect opinions backed by supporting, verifiable, relevant data (even if the data point to conclusions that are contrary to my interests).</p>
<p>bedhead,
My comments about the top universities were not meant to be for their business offerings, but rather the value of their brand and its appeal to employers nationally. </p>
<p>And I concur with your idea of skill specific appeal for recruiters. An employer in Florida looking for engineers is not likely to have as much of a regional focus as another employer in Florida looking to hire students for areas like real estate development or advertising or marketing. In this case, where the employer needs a defined set of skills, the student from outside of the region has a greater opportunity to get the position.</p>
<p>Grad school recruiting is a wholly different thing. In this case, students and employers alike have much, much greater geographic strength and flexibility. Quality, as judged by the specific institution and the type of degree, is the key here.</p>
<p>"When someone gives you the SAT scores, the alumni giving info, the size of the classes, etc. you know what they are giving you. These are facts that you as a consumer can weight according to your own needs"</p>
<p>Well, there are facts and there are facts.</p>
<p>SAT scores are a number. We don't know what they measure, how a person prepared, whether they had a tutor, influences that affected a person's score, like upbringing, education, a person's native language, wealth of parents, etc. We don't know how many times a person took the test and whether that person is a linear thinker or a creative thinker. </p>
<p>But yes, we have a number. </p>
<p>If you don't like my analysis, you can read or hear what the head of admissions for MIT says about SAT scores.</p>
<p>You like the SAT scores because it verifies your thinking, not because they are relevant, verifiable, supportable, etc. </p>
<p>They are none of the above. ;)</p>
<p>dstark
I'm not sure what "thinking" you refer to that verifies my support of the use of SAT scores. Would you please help me understand what you are suggesting? </p>
<p>I checked the CDS at MIT. At MIT, no academic factor is weighed more heavily than the standardized test scores. They have rated "Standardized test scores" as Important. This is the same consideration that they give to four other academic factors: 1) Rigor of secondary school record; 2) Class rank; 3) Academic GPA; and 4) Recommendation. At MIT, the only academic factor that is ranked below standardized test scores is the Application Essay. It would seem that the MIT Admissions Department thinks that SATs are a useful and important measure for the evaluation of college applicants.</p>
<p>Do you believe that the PA is a good measure of the quality of teaching that a student will receive at any given college? Are you a defender of PA because you believe in its value or are you arguing for it because the measurement benefits your school? Please clarify and explain.</p>
<p>Hawkette, you're not going around the board talking about SAT scores in your arguments about schools?</p>
<p>Ok. I thought you were. </p>
<p>Many schools use SAT scores. It's useful to categorize a person quickly.</p>
<p>Where am I a defender of PA scores?</p>
<p>I'm a defender of Michigan as a great school. My kid goes there and I see the education that is offered there. I also like the atmosphere at the school. I like the students I have met. The weather sucks.</p>
<p>Do I like that Michigan has a high PA? Yes.
Do I have to defend or want to defend it. No.</p>
<p>There is nothing for me to defend. If you don't like PA, go argue with USNWR or the people that gave Michigan high marks.</p>
<p>I think the school is great for people that want large schools with strong school spirit, great sports teams, a fantastic college town, and very strong academics. My daughter has great relationships with a few professors, she is a grader for one. She is taking a graduate course this year, and she is and has taken graduate level courses in the past including her freshman year. </p>
<p>The ranking stuff is just playground nonsense. I'm better than you, I'm stronger than you, my dad can beat up your dad.</p>
<p>So when you come on this board and talk about rankings, and SAT scores, and PA scores.....</p>
<p>You can get a great education all over the place.</p>
<p>lol, there goes hawkette turning another innocent thread into a peer assessment debate, sigh.</p>
<p>dstark,
SATs are a commonly used data point for measuring the quality of applicants and enrollees. In several different threads, I have pointed out the relative average SAT scores for many schools. I’m a bit confused by your posts as you seemed to challenge their use in your post # 30 and yet you appear to accept their use in post # 32. I must be misinterpreting one of your comments as I’m not sure which view you favor.</p>
<p>Re your statement “I'm a defender of Michigan as a great school. My kid goes there and I see the education that is offered there. I also like the atmosphere at the school.” I am glad that you and your child are happy with the school. It is a very fine school and I have never claimed otherwise. </p>
<p>Re the use of USNWR data, with the exception of the PA (which I abhor because I don’t have any idea what it really is and what it really measures), IMO the USNWR data is very useful. Different students want different things and the objective data can provide important clues about the nature and quality of the undergraduate experience. I’m not sure why that is objectionable to you or anyone else. </p>
<p>Lastly, for azwolves and anyone who feels that PA is useful and relevant, I am sorry to sound like a one-note Suzy on this topic. My objections began when I got sick of the many Michigan supporters who would passionately wave this number around as if it were hugely significant for college applicants and “proof” that Michigan is the equal of the the lower Ivies and other top privates. I (and many others) challenge the legitimacy of the PA and object to its inclusion in any kind of ranking. If someone would just explain to me why this number is so useful and important and relevant, then maybe you just might shut me up. Debate on this topic is useful, but is especially useful when both sides step up to make their arguments. I invite you again to join the discussion on the PA thread.</p>
<p>Hawkette, you don't get it. I don't care about the PA. I care about the education. I didn't derive the PA. I didn't put it in USNWR. I didn't decide how much weight to give it. USNWR did. I never mentioned it when talking about Michigan.</p>
<p>Why are you so concerned about PA? Really?</p>
<p>Is it because schools your daughter might consider have lower PAs than Michigan? Are you concerned they might have some validity?</p>
<p>Are you trying to knock off Alexandre?</p>
<p>Why do you feel so threatened?</p>
<p>You do realize that Michigan can be as good as the lower Ivys even if the PA doesn't exist.</p>
<p>You do realize that Michigan can be as good as the lower Ivys even if it is ranked lower in a magazine.</p>
<p>Why are you more concerned about rankings than an education?</p>
<p>Posts #30 and #32 aren't contradictions.</p>
<p>If you want to use USNWR, go ahead. Hopefully a school you choose doesn't drop 10 spots in the ranking while your kid is there. It will just destroy her education.</p>
<p>hawkette, go to another thread to talk about PA. This is/(was) a Business Week BBA ranking thread until you came in. </p>
<p>dstark - don't feed the troll.</p>
<p>dstark,
You and I probably agree far more than we disagree on education and college selection. My comments on PA here were originally meant to differentiate the USNWR survey methodology from the BW survey. </p>
<p>azwolves,
You are correct that this began re business majors and, like many other threads on CC, moved on to other related topics. As it relates to rankings, which is the origin of this thread, the PA was raised. I have made 9 posts on this thread and the PA was not mentioned until the sixth. I appreciate your willingness to exchange ideas.</p>
<p>There are probably 10X as many top schools that give the SAT less weight than MIT does. See Sarah Lawrence thread for one.</p>
<p>I love how stern has a higher average sat score than wharton (1443), 93% of people have job offer before graduation, average salary + bonus of 75k.....yet we are ranked below bringham young.</p>
<p>...and emory and notre dame.
dont get me wrong, these are great schools, but top 10?
by what measure - job placement rate, corporate/peer assessment, or starting salary? I would really like to see BW's formula before I am convinced.</p>