<p>yay, overrated for sure, but it is useful</p>
<p>I don't really look into overall rank. I just look into the indivual programs. For instance, I want to go into business. So I look at Forbes (MBA though), Gorman report, Business week, and USNews. This gives me a general idea.</p>
<p>well, there aren't many indiviidual ranks for academic economics or political science (or any at all)</p>
<p>Nobody ranks undergraduate major programs because it's a waste of time.</p>
<p>why is it a waste of time? strength of program is one thing I'm struggling to find info on</p>
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I don't really look into overall rank. I just look into the indivual programs. For instance, I want to go into business. So I look at Forbes (MBA though), Gorman report, Business week, and USNews. This gives me a general idea.
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<p>Personally, I think that of the business rankings, the USNews one, while still flawed, is probably the best one out there. All of the business rankings have flaws to be sure, but it seems to me that USNews is the least flawed of the bunch.</p>
<p>Take Forbes for instance. Forbes uses one measure and one measure only - the 5 year gain in salary, pre to post MBA. This obviously unfairly punishes those B-schools that bring in lots of incoming students who made a lot of money pre-MBA, generally meaning engineers (engineers tend to make pretty good money). Hence, engineering-oriented MBA programs like Stanford, MIT and CMU get hurt. It also tends to hurt those programs that tend to send people to less-lucrative (but also far less stressful) fields of business, like operations (i.e. MITSloan, CMU), or marketing (Northwestern Kellogg). Just look at the Forbes rating and you will see some truly strange anomalies. For example, in Forbes, Washington U is #12, and, NYU is #14, MITSloan is #15. That's pretty indefensible - I suspect that most Washington U MBA students don't honestly believe that their school is better than Sloan or NYU. North Carolina is #8 and Northwestern Kellogg is #9. I rather doubt that a lot of people are turning down Northwestern to go to North Carolina, unless perhaps to save money. And Yale is #5, better than #6 Wharton and #7 Stanford. Don't get me wrong, the Yale School of Management is a fine school, but I doubt that a lot of people are really turning down Sloan, Wharton, or Stanford in order to get their MBA at Yale. </p>
<p>Or consider Gourman. I only have the 1998 edition of Gourman on me, but come on, the University of Pittsburgh (#12 in Gourman) is not better than Michigan (#18 in Gourman) or Dartmouth Tuck (#16 in Gourman) or Duke (#13 in Gourman). </p>
<p>The same is true for BW, which I think is REALLY overrated as a B-school rating. Seriously, I think it's hard to make the case that Harvard Business School is only the #5 school in the country. BW ranks Chicago #2, but come on, Chicago is not 3 places better than BW. Think of it this way, I don't think there are too many HBS students who would rather be going to Chicago but couldn't get in, but a lot of Chicago MBA students would rather be at HBS but couldn't get in. </p>
<p>The BW rankings tend to swing wildly also. And business schools don't change that quickly. For example, BW has ranked Dartmouth-Tuck anywhere from #3 to #16. I don't think things changed THAT much at Tuck. In a 2-year span, MIT moved up from #15 to #4. I find it hard to believe that things got THAT much better at MIT in only 2 years. </p>
<p>USNews is flawed too,don't get me wrong. But on the whole, for the MBA rankings, USNews is probably the most stable and the most accurate.</p>
<p>lol how is it a waste of time at all?</p>