<p>rhg3rd:</p>
<p>My knowledge of Booth/GSB at least doesn’t extend back to the 70s or 80s really, and that very well may have been the case. In the 90s and early 00s, though, I don’t think Booth/GSB was in the top 3 with Harvard and Stanford. The general sentiment I’ve heard is that in the 00s Snyder did a very good job (read: good managing and tremendous fundraising) and this lifted the school a bit.</p>
<p>Booth has been ranked No. 1 from the mid-90s through now in almost every year that B’school rankings have come out from the only publications that matter for B’schools: Business Week and The Economist/Financial Times. US News is not much of a business publication (and really is not much of a publication period) and no one in the business world quite seems to pay much attention to it. A major component of Business Week and Economist/Financial Times rankings is job placement/perceived quality by employers and academia, in which Booth pretty much beats all others. The only reason Booth used to do poorly in these rankings prior to the mid-90s was that it was too hard and too quantitative an program, and most liberal arts background students used to struggle in it (in fact, it was considered by far the most rigorous b’school alongwith UVa Darden, with Kellogg at the other extreme of being the easiest top b’school). Stanford was also at the harder end, Wharton and Duke in the middle and HBS also slightly easier than the median. The joke used to be don’t ask an HBS grad to add two 3-digit numbers or you are going to get a long story about why it is not important to add numbers but to understand why numbers are important, without getting a real answer to either question after wasting much time.</p>
<p>Booth started getting ranked higher again after it watered down its program in the early 90s to make it more palatable to non-quants. It has remained at the top since then (other than in the US News rankings).</p>
<p>[Top</a> Business School Rankings: MBA, Undergrad, Executive & Online MBA - Businessweek](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>[Which</a> MBA? | The Economist](<a href=“http://www.economist.com/whichmba/full-time-mba-ranking]Which”>WhichMBA?)</p>
<p>@Cue7. I agree with rhg3rd that in the late 70s to the late 80s the business and law school were riding very high due to the popularity of supply-side economics/Friedman/Reagan. That was when everyone and his mother wanted to become an investment banker/arbitrage lawyer and hardly anyone “smart” wanted to go into medicine. Moreover, when I attended Chicago as an undergrad in the early 80s it was ranked top 3 when everything back then was based on “academic” prestige…before USNews even came out with its “rankings”.</p>
<p>If you’ve read The Quants by Scott Patterson, you’ll see Chicago GBS mentioned over and over. The birthplace of quantitative finance.</p>
<p>Booth is now a clear top 1 or 4 depending on who you ask. Kellogg or MIT rounds the top 5. Wharton is losing ground and so is HBS (hence their attempts to increase apps by requiring no essays). With tech finding homes in cities other than SF, Stanford has reached an apex of sorts and is no longer the only school for tech wannabes. </p>
<p>If new tech like nano and bio becomes less concentrated than what happened to IT, Booth can solidify its influence. At which point, the rankings will cease to be interesting. </p>
<p>I think the college will be the same. If this “sudden surge” plateaus, UChic will be a solid top 5 and all this talk about the amazing rise of the college will no longer get the attention it is getting now. </p>
<p>Then we all will find something else to do like get a dog or something.</p>
<p>FStratford:</p>
<p>Maybe perception bears out what you’re saying, but through knowing administrators at Booth, and having been in meetings with some higher-ups at Wharton and Stanford, at least the schools’ perception of their peers is quite different.</p>
<p>Wharton’s main peers, at least in terms of cross-admits, are Harvard and Stanford, with Harvard winning the lion’s share of students from Wharton. Stanford considers H and W peers as well. From an admissions standpoint at least, when talking about admissions gains or losses, Booth (or Kellogg or Columbia or whatever) simply don’t seem to come up, and aren’t as much on the radar at H, W, and S. </p>
<p>Similarly, Ed Snyder had noted gains Booth made in recent years but, at least within the school, noted that that Wharton, Harvard and Stanford “still eat out lunch” when it comes to winning cross admits and in terms of general stature. </p>
<p>Now, Booth is in a impromptu consortium known of “the 7” b schools (W, H, S, Booth, Columbia, Kellogg, MIT), so it’s firmly in that top group, but the top three, at least from one vantage point, remains W H and S. </p>
<p>[?President?s</a> Summit?: Heads of Seven Major Business School MBA Student Governments Launch ?MBA Peer School Forum? for Inter-school Cohesion and Collaboration | News](<a href=“http://news.wharton.upenn.edu/press-releases/2010/04/presidents-summit-heads-of-seven-major-business-school-mba-student-governments-launch-mba-peer-school-forum-for-inter-school-cohesion-and-collaboration/]?President?s”>“President’s Summit”: Heads of Seven Major Business School MBA Student Governments Launch “MBA Peer School Forum” for Inter-school Cohesion and Collaboration - News)</p>
<p>(This is similar to the Stanford report floating around on this board, where only HYPM were named as peers by the admissions committee - and the rest of the schools - UChicago, Duke, Columbia, etc. - were statistically insignificant to Stanford’s admissions.)</p>
<p>Amazing how it works. It used to be that general perception lagged behind inert school perceptions of Booth. Now it’s the reverse. </p>
<p>I wonder how old these HSW data are that the peer schools are looking at. Do you hav access to data?</p>
<p>Unfortunately no data (and I doubt that would be publicly available. On that note, I was surprised that Stanford undergrad admissions data - where they only compared themselves to HYPM, went public). I’ve either been in conversations or heard about conversations regarding these topics with those in the know.</p>
<p>Also, the “7” schools I linked to above made the decision to form that league of sorts with intent. They generally conceive of themselves as peers, although there seems to be a pecking order within those 7 (with H, W, and S at the top). Based on this, I sort of doubt that “general perception” is changing much.</p>
<p>Historically Chicago is more quantitative than other business schools. At one end was Harvard with its case method, and the other end was Chicago with economic and quantitative analysis. All business schools now try to use a mix of the two approaches.</p>
<p>The fact that Stanford or Harvard may consider Wharton a peer in admissions matters has to do with the similarities of their programs. Chicago is a more rigorous and comprehensive MBA program than the others when it comes to the core disciplines. Wharton is more like Columbia, NU, NYU and every other MBA program than like Chicago. It tends to be geared for career changers who may not have strong quantitative backgrounds as undergrads.</p>
<p>What gets taught at Chicago is a graduate curriculum in business administration that is often too difficult for undergraduate liberal arts majors. If you examine class profiles of Wharton and Chicago, you’ll see Chicago has more undergrad business and engineering/physical science majors than Wharton. Chicago also has a smaller percentage of women.</p>
<p>rhg3rd:</p>
<p>I think that’s true, and it puts Booth in more of a niche. Whereas Wharton, Harvard, and Stanford can market themselves broadly, Booth probably appeals to a smaller slice of the applicant pool. In that way, then, it’s more of a “niche” school.</p>
<p>The same can maybe be said of UChicago as a whole. While this can be good in some regards, it can make the going a bit more difficult say, on the fundraising trail.</p>
<p>I don’t agree about it being a niche b’school. Chicago teaches specific skills based on quantitative analysis. Harvard’s method does not quite <em>teach</em> much, but through its case studies provides an overview of different industries and how certain decisions by organizations are made. In the process the student tends to teach him/herself some underlying concepts but not much. The reason their grads do well in life is not because what HBS taught them, but because they were among the smartest people around to start with, who now have a big branded stamp of approval granted by the HBS admissions office. The Chicago method actually does teach analytical skills with greater depth – depth that provides them the ability to hit the ground running in industry.</p>
<p>I have probably oversimplified, but the general concept is the same.</p>
<p>“I was surprised that Stanford undergrad admissions data - where they only compared themselves to HYPM, went public”</p>
<p>The reason the Stanford data likely went public is because they deliberately wanted it to go public. The reason for that probably is that they want to be considered in the same breath as the traditional “HYP”. It’s in their best interest that “HYP” gets permanently changed to “HYPS” or “HYPSM” and that people don’t refer to HYP by itself in the future.</p>
<h1>1 friedman:</h1>
<p>UChicago-still HYPS reject land?</p>
<p>IMO definitely not.
There are two reasons:
(1) UChicago is equally preferred to HYPS for the quirky or some Midwest students who try to concentrate on academics.
(2) UChicago is not preferred not only to HYPS but also to other ivy league schools including Cornell, until now, for the Eastern students who want broader experiences at undergraduate days. </p>
<h1>4: phuriku:</h1>
<p>Although statistically insignificant at a college-to-college level, Chicago is recorded to be taking about 40% of cross-admits with schools like Princeton, MIT, and Yale as well…Today, [1] Chicago is hardly a school for HYPSM-rejects, and [2] is probably performing on par with HYPSM. </p>
<p>In my humble opinion [1] is true but [2] is misleading. why?
(1) see reply to friedman
(2) In spite of statistical insignificance Chicagos cross-admits with other peers are: Penn (38%), Columbia (38%), Brown (54%), Dartmouth (57%), Cornell (52%), Georgetown (57%), Rice (58%) and Duke (36%).</p>
<p>JustOrdinary:</p>
<p>The data never went public because Stanford “wanted” to be in the same peer group as H, Y, etc. Rather, these are customary faculty senate minutes, all of which are posted regularly on Stanford’s site. This is the document I referred to above:</p>
<p><a href=“http://facultysenate.stanford.edu/2010_2011/minutes/10_07_10_SenD6388.pdf[/url]”>http://facultysenate.stanford.edu/2010_2011/minutes/10_07_10_SenD6388.pdf</a> (look at p. 20-21)</p>
<p>As you can see, it’s a compilation of statistics, and it demonstrates that, of cross-admits, the only schools that win a significant number of cross-admits from Stanford are Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and MIT. Stanford didn’t release the data because they “wanted” to be in a certain peer group - the data simply reflected Stanford’s chief rivals in terms of admissions. As you’ll also note, this document addresses plenty of other topics - admissions was just a small part of it.</p>
<p>Given the audience intended to review this document, and the fact that Stanford customarily posts ALL faculty senate minutes online, I highly doubt this was a chest-thumping move. </p>
<p>If you’d like to review the hundreds of other faculty senate minutes Stanford has online, please feel free:</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://facultysenate.stanford.edu/Quick_Links/minutes_list.html]minutes_list[/url”>http://facultysenate.stanford.edu/Quick_Links/minutes_list.html]minutes_list[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Here’s why those 4 were chosen:</p>
<p>“The next slide was a bar graph showing the top 20 colleges attended by students offered admission to Stanford who chose to attend another college. Only 4 of the 20 exceeded 2%. Those four were MIT (13%), Princeton (14%), Yale (16%), and Harvard (32%). Noticeably absent from the 20 was the University of California at Berkeley.”</p>
<p>Well, virtually nobody chose Berkeley over Stanford. There’s no point to compare.
</p>
<p>Like Cue, I also don’t think Stanford was trying to promote itself. Regardless, “HYP” just doesn’t make sense when Stanford is even with Yale and has been winning against P. If you have to keep only three letters to preserve “Trinity”, replace P with S.</p>
<p>@Sam and Cue. To be honest, I get the impression Stanford considers “only” Harvard as its true rival and Harvard considers Stanford as its true rival as well. Stanford only mentioned the “other” schools to be politically correct…</p>
<p>…as you know Stanford has been basically the top “dream” school for most students this past decade and in recent years even the parents have their eyes set on Stanford…</p>
<p>…the combination of top humanities/social sciences departments plus top computer science/engineering departments plus top law, business, medical schools make Stanford a force that will be hard to deal with in the coming decades…</p>
<p>…if the USNews was not published/edited by a Harvard man (Mortimer Zuckerman) and Forbes magazine was not published/edited by a Princeton man (Steve Forbes)…those reverse-engineered rankings would be more “believable”…but, as it is, one can easily see why they don’t want Stanford to steal their thunder or any other school for that matter…</p>
<p>…going forward Stanford and Harvard will separate themselves from the rest because they are the only two schools with strengths in all the departments plus top professional schools/PhD programs (Harvard will try hard to catch up to Stanford in computer science/engineering but it will be difficult because Stanford is located in the heart of Silicon Valley)…the problem with Princeton is that it lacks professional schools and Chicago lacks engineering programs…</p>
<p>Stanford has something else going for it that its private school peers do not. Climate. I know many high school students cross admitted to top 10 schools with Stanford and chose it for that reason alone over the others. Climate is something that cannot be acquired (at least not until we get a little more CO2 into the air). All Stanford has to do is remain reasonably close in academics to Chicago and others and it will likely win most cross admit decisions.</p>
<p>^Not so simple; Palo Alto is kinda boring and Stanford is still 35 miles from San Francisco. There is CalTrain but it’s not as convenient as a typical subway line.</p>
<p>Hmmmm. Below zero or three feet of snow or 60 degrees… Where would one like to be bored?</p>