<p>I don’t mean to be harsh or rude, but this is a really, really stupid discussion. Whose ranked number five?!? Why are so many people entertaining this question? This is exactly the type of closed minded, brand centric discussion that leads nowhere, waists allot of good human energy and makes MBAs look like bubble blowing chimps.</p>
<p>gellino, lol on you. You dished out that post from the other section of this forum in the hope to attack me. Of course, that was clearly a hypothetical question which was asked to younger people, not those who are MBAs or MBA aspirants.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You’re trying to tell me there isn’t a huge difference b/w Harvard and UCLA, as far as an MBA goes? Or even Harvard and Columbia?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Any respected member on this board will tell you that there is a large gap between the undisputed top 3 (HWS) and the rest of the field. In that sense, yes, there is a huge gap between 3 and 6. The “value” of a top MBA is what you put into yourself, and is completely subjective (I asked this question on this board myself, interested in what the responses would be). However, there’s denying that however you yourself may judge an MBA, HWS are clearly in an standing by themselves. </p>
<p>If I had to rank the programs on my own accord, I would say:
- Harvard
- Stanford
- Wharton
- Kellogg
- Booth
- Columbia
- Sloan
- Haas</p>
<p>Again, this is totally my own opinion and highly disputable, However, the top 3 is not, and any “ranking” system that does not have those at the top is simply incorrect.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It has nothing to do with seeking an attack. Presumably, it’s the same person; so why should anyone on any of the forums feel the need to respect or take seriously the opinions of any poster asking such ignorant questions? I guess you’re now qualified to be the President of the University of Florida.</p>
<p>^ Don’t make this an issue between the two of us, but between Berkeley-Haas and Tuck.
Again, it was a hypothetical question.</p>
<p>agreed that HSW are the undisputed top three - probably in that order.</p>
<p>Also, I happen to have worked in a fixed income group where the dpt head was a chicago mba, and had hired quite a few more Chicago grads whom I worked with. All of them where honest about the fact that they went there because they had been rejected from H/W, and perhaps a little more surprisingly, from MIT Sloan. I don’t see how any credible ranking puts Chicago at #1, or even more ludicrously, Stanford at #6.</p>
<p>also, never in a million years would I or anyone I know attend Haas over Tuck.</p>
<p>I would presume that those who love Haas would “never in a million years attend” Tuck over Haas, for I would presume that those who are attracted to Haas are the type that are also attracted to Stanford, MIT-Sloan, aside from H,W and Probably Kellogg. I would imagine Haas and Tuck applicants don’t usually overlap.</p>
<p>Exactly RML. Tuck and Haas are very different types of programs, both equally good (not quite top 5 but both top 10), but attract very different types of applicants.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That is a meaningless statement. Those who love Kellogg would “never in a million years attend” Harvard over Kellogg but it still doesn’t mean that Harvard is generally considered a better school. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Tuck and Haas are not that different. I’ve known more common apps to Tuck and Haas than MIT and Haas. From what I’ve seen of applicants and matriculants, I wouldn’t call Tuck and Haas “equally good”.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I agree; Haas is now the better business school between the two.</p>
<p>Again, reality check my friend. Both USNews and Businessweek have ranked Haas higher than Tuck. Maybe in your time, Tuck was slightly a superior business school to Haas. But today, it isn’t better than Haas anymore. And two credible league tables have confirmed that too.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My time wasn’t very long ago and things in academia don’t change that fast. My perspective was not to mindlessly follow the rankings of people who don’t have MBAs as justification of what schools are better; especially when much of what makes a business school is its alums, which is not significantly changing on a yearly basis.</p>
<p>gellino, MBA rankings are derived primarily by MBA program heads, heads of recruitment and executives at major companies and placement success. Haas and Tuck are generally ranked around the same. Other than your own opinion and evaluation (and those of the people you “know”), do you have any evidence to support your claims that Tuck is superior to Haas?</p>
<p>Seeing people from my and my classmates’ IB analyst classes, who were the most highly sought after candidates coming out of UG and seeing where they applied and enrolled is certainly evidence to me. Berkeley was certainly not on the map in comparison to Tuck to the point that I had never heard the name “Haas” even from the people I knew who went there until coming to this forum as they just referred to the fact that they were going to Cal/Berkeley. The chart someone posted on here showing the percentage going into PE/IM (the most highly desired jobs) from each school had Tuck much higher than Haas (I think by close to double). I would certainly care about that stat much more than published rankings; especially BW, which is usually way off and has changed drastically from one ranking to the next in the past. After that, what is evidence? This is all nebulous and intangible or else there would be no debate about it. However, going by rankings and making an important distinction of a one spot difference (in one particular year) is ridiculous to me. There were a couple of years earlier this decade for UG where USNWR ranked Penn ahead of Stanford but that didn’t mean that Stanford was all of a sudden inferior to Penn or less desired by what actually matters, namely the matriculants; especially in the case of MBA schools, which are all providing pretty much a standard commodity product and it is the alums and the enrollees and what they go on to do that really matters.</p>
<p>Gellino, you are basing your entire ranking of MBAs on placement statistics into one firm or one industry that appeals only to a fraction of the MBA population? That’s right Gellino, ME and IB are not “the most highly desired jobs.” Yes, they are popular, but so are jobs with zippy start-ups and tech companies, Pharma and Biotech companies, Management Consulting firms, Aerospace companies etc… Just because MBA programs such as Booth, Haas, Kellogg and Ross don’t attract as high a percentage of students interested in IB/PE does not mean the programs don’t attract IB/PE recruiters or that they are somehow inferior. Those are all top 10 MBAprograms, and all top 10 MBA programs save HBS, Wharton, Stanford and Kellogg are pretty equal. </p>
<p>And your comparison of MBA rankings to the USNWR undergraduate ranking is not valid since the USNWR undergraduate rankings are based on many factors such as alumni donations, faculty and financial resources and graduation rates. That explains why you get really weird rankings, with academic powerhouses such as Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Brown and Cal ranked between #14 and #21 more years. </p>
<p>MBA rankings, on the other hand, are based purely on what MBA experts (in academe and in the corporate world) think, placement figures and selectivity.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My comparison to USNWR rankings is valid because my statement is not conditional on how the rankings are compiled. To say Haas is superior to Tuck because in one year (for the first time, no less), it was ranked one spot higher than Tuck and to base your assessment of which school is better off of this is exactly analogous to the situation of saying that Penn is superior to Stanford for UG based on one year’s USNWR ranking.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t know what ME is supposed to be and nowhere on here did I say that IB was the most desired job but it is not one firm or one industry. If you look at posts on here or had an MBA, you would see that PE/IM are clearly the most highly sought-after jobs. The reason that only a fraction get those jobs is because most are not good enough to get them and is why Harvard and Stanford grads have the highest percentage of all business schools of people who do get these jobs.</p>
<p>“My comparison to USNWR rankings is valid because my statement is not conditional on how the rankings are compiled. To say Haas is superior to Tuck because in one year (for the first time, no less), it was ranked one spot higher than Tuck and to base your assessment of which school is better off of this is exactly analogous to the situation of saying that Penn is superior to Stanford for UG based on one year’s USNWR ranking.”</p>
<p>I don’t agree with your logic. You are making no sense at all since you are not using a common frame of reference. </p>
<p>“If you look at posts on here or had an MBA, you would see that PE/IM are clearly the most highly sought-after jobs. The reason that only a fraction get those jobs is because most are not good enough to get them and is why Harvard and Stanford grads have the highest percentage of all business schools of people who do get these jobs.”</p>
<p>Comparing MBA programs based on PE placements is like ranking universities based on Rhodes Scholars or Nobel prize winners. There are just too few PE joiners from even the top MBA programs to come to any conclusive finding. There are currently 150 or so HBS alums working for the top 6 PE firms (Bain, Blackstone, Carlyle, PEP, Silverlake, Warburg Pincus). Well done indeed. Of course, harvard graduates over 800 MBAs each year, so that means that in the last 40 years, of the 25,000 HBS graduates, 150 have managed to build a successful career in PE. That’s roughly 0.5%. </p>
<p>There are currently 50 or so Wharton alums working for the top 6 PE firms. That means that in the last 40 years, 0.15% of Wharton alums have managed a successul career in PE. Again, well done. Stanford , Columbia, Booth and Kellogg are the only other MBA programs to have produced more than 20 current PE employees at the top 6 PE firms. Ross is 7th with 14 MBAs currently employed at the 6 main PE firms. Hey, I think I like this method of ranking MBA programs! </p>
<p>Tuck currently has 11 MBAs currently employed at the top 6 PE firms. Haas has 6. Considering the fact that both programs have graduated over 8,000 MBA in the last 40 years, that number is, I am sure you agree, not very telling. If anything, a university’s (or program’s) placement rate into major PE firms is (1) always an insignificant fraction of a percentage point and (2) probably more a factor of that institution’s geographic location than quality.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So, it’s ridiculous to say that Stanford is inferior to Penn because one year USNWR ranked Penn one spot higher but it’s accurate to say that Tuck is inferior to Berkeley for an MBA because one year USNWR ranked Berkeley one spot higher? That doesn’t make any sense at all.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t know how you decided what the top 6 PE firms are, why KKR wouldn’t be among them, or why only 6 firms should be considered. On a chart that I think Denzera posted on one of these threads in evaluating differences in schools, the numbers on just the most recent year’s grads going into some type of investing role (PE, VC, IM, HF) were significantly higher than 0.5% or 0.15%. I don’t remember which thread it was but if I’m remembering correctly the numbers were something ~ 31% of Harvard grads, 25% of Stanford grads, 17% of Tuck grads, 9% of Haas grads whose first job is on the buyside. These differences are far from insignificant to me. In my experience of witnessing what classmates’ second jobs are, these figures have increased a few years out of school, although would imagine they would decrease in time as some go from investing in companies to being a part of them; or at least this is the general path I’ve observed.</p>
<p>Gellino, when did I say that TRuck was inferior to Haas? I said they were roughly equal. You are the one who claimed that Tuck was superior to Haas. And my point was that the USNWR undergraduate rankings are 40% determined by academic quality and selectivity. The rest of the rating is questionable in nature. MBA rankings are 100% based on academic quality, professional placement and selectivity. As such, the USNWR undergraduate rankings force people to agree that graduation rates, financial and faculty resources and alumni donation rates are more important than academic quality and selectivity. Most people would not agree with that approach. MBA rankings are much more targeted. </p>
<p>As for employment percentages in PE firms, your numbers seem very skewed. If only 0.5% of Harvard MBA alums are employed at the 6 largest PE firms, it would mean that Harvard MBAs are employeed in equal quantity (per PE firm) at over 60 PE firms. That does not seem likely. Do you care to share reliable and verified statistics. My stats are based on the actual websites of the PE firms I mentioned. I wanted to include KKR, but they do not publish detailed information on employee education. And the reason why I chose only 6 or 7 PE firms is because the rest of the PE firms tend to be either tiny or just not that great. Not that it matters since I stand by my belief that most MBAs are many programs simply do not care to go into PE. I would not judge a MBA by its PE placement. I guess I am not that easily imprssed. I have pretty high standards when it comes to social responsibility. I am more impressed by the number of executives working at Fortunate 500 companies…you know, people who actually work for a living and contribute to their community.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>They may be more targeted but it doesn’t mean they’re any more accurate. I don’t really follow published rankings any more, not that I gave them much credibility when I was applying but have any ever consistently ranked Harvard, Stanford some form of #1,2 with Wharton #3? I think without this, I don’t care what the methodology is that they’re just wrong.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It wasn’t just PE firms, it was all aspects of the buyside (PE, VC, HF, IM). It wasn’t anything I had compiled but a spreadsheet to compare schools that another poster, who was in the process of applying to B-schools, had put together. However, from the schools I was familiar with, the relative breakdown of professions appeared reasonably accurate to me.</p>