<p>Business Schools (MBA):</p>
<p>1) Dartmouth (Tuck)
2) Berkeley (Haas)
3) Columbia
etc. .......</p>
<p>I've said it before, and I'll say it again. B-schools should not be valued according to recruiter satisfaction. In fact, ideally, recruiters should be unsatisfied. Keep in mind that recruiters are not on your side. Let's be honest. Given the choice, all recruiters would like to rope in the best people while paying them minimal salaries and no benefits/bonuses to work 100 hours a week doing the crappiest jobs that nobody else wants to do while being forced to live in the worst locations where nobody else wants to be. In other words, you can always increase recruiter satisfaction by just having your graduates demand less. Recruiters love it when they can find graduates who won't negotiate hard with them and will take worse jobs. </p>
<p>What you should be really measuring is not recruiter satisfaction per se, but rather recruiter retention. Take Harvard Business School. HBS has been notorious for ticking off recruiters time and time again. Recruiters always decry the penchant of HBS students of demanding too much power, too much money, too much everything. Naturally, recruiters are not "satisfied" with HBS. But that doesn't matter. They keep coming back. After all, if they really really didn't like it, they would no longer recruit at HBS. But they keep coming back. Let's be honest. Whether they enjoy it or not, the top recruiters are all at HBS. </p>
<p>Stanford has a similar problem. Recruiters tend to report extreme frustration with recruiting Stanford MBA's, largely because many of them just don't want to leave the Bay Area, and often times prefer to join startups. But again, why is that a bad thing? I would argue that that's a GOOD thing, as it means that the students are getting what they want. </p>
<p>Essentially what that means is that HBS and Stanford students can demand a lot because they know they can. They have a lot of good options and they know it. They have bargaining power. Other students at less prominent schools cannot be as demanding. Recruiters like that. That's why recruiters might like a school like North Carolina over schools like Harvard or Stanford.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. B-schools should not be valued according to recruiter satisfaction.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Wow, the level of oversimplification in your statement is astounding.</p>
<p>Recruiters tend to be happy with the following. And by the way, I know this from because I worked for a top 5 b-school for several years and have talked to many, many recruiters:</p>
<ul>
<li>yield (number of acceptances vs. offers)</li>
<li>absolute numbers of acceptances and offers (it is easiest to go to one campus than to 3. so large schools are often favored, if they have the right level of quality)</li>
<li>organization of recruiting process</li>
<li>service mentality of recruiting organization</li>
<li>effectiveness of recruiting organization</li>
</ul>
<p>But don't think that the people putting together these surveys are simplistic enough not to note there is not going to be a sour grapes factor among recruiters. They ask specific questions to try to tease them out.</p>
<p>This ranking doesn't say anything about the pickiness or exclusiveness of the recruiting organization, and there are recruiters that will specifically target top 10-20 schools versus going for a Wharton or Tuck, for instance.</p>
<p>But even though recruiters may be spurned sometimes and want to take it out on the school, there is a strong element in this kind of survey that rewards schools for exactly what they should be rewarded for -- being organized, supporting the recruiting process professionally, and making it work as well as it can for all those involved.</p>
<p>You are naive, though, if you think all recruiters expect huge yield at any top business school.</p>
<p>In specific case of ranked schools here, I have heard peer presentations from recruiting departments at Haas, Stanford, Wharton, etc. From these I know that Haas has significantly boosted its recruiting operation and this is, rightly, reflected in a great increase in recruiter satisfaction as reflected in rankings like this one or the BusinessWeek undergrad rankings. </p>
<p>That's the thing about rankings: you have to consider what they emphasize, what lies underneath. And likewise you shouldn't assume Harvard and Stanford, simply because of their cachet, do all things right or well. You simply don't know this with any level of generalizable confidence. Nor do I. It's the recruiters surveyed are the ones who do. </p>
<p>For many years, UChicago was rated very highly because, among other things, its recruiting operation was stellar.</p>
<p>I think the original discussion revolved around whether the WSJ recruiter satisfaction rankings could be interpreted as an absolute assessment about the quality of graduates at those schools. I think that your post helps to clarify that this is not the case; that the WSJ rankings are more about the overall, all-encompassing recruiter-experience one has when recruiting at the school.</p>
<p>
[quote]
could be interpreted as an absolute assessment about the quality of graduates at those schools.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Wait a minute. This was never a discussion about the quality of graduates of the respective schools. And that's exactly why I have a problem with rankings often, in general. Schools with expansive reputations are in some ways let off the hook, in a sense, from having to prove their quality through the management of their programs in line with their stated missions. They ride on their reputations and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that good students will opt for them. But that breeds complacency, which is something that Sakky's theory doesn't take into account as being a real experience that recruiters have, apart from the sour grapes which legitimately can occur.</p>
<p>Certainly, this ranking is stilted to focus on recruiters. That's why I called out recruiters as a key in the title.</p>
<p>Here's a ranking that aggregates the results of several rankings. Sorry, the table doesn't copy into CC. But it shows a) I think a pretty good summation of which schools should be in which tiers (without regard to their exact placement within that tier) and b) it shows the radical differences inherent in different rankings (it reads as follows: the rankings are listed from top to bottom and correspond to the numbers from right to left behind the name of each school. So, for instance, Stanford is ranked 2 by EIU and 18 by the Wall Street Journal):</p>
<p>Consensus ranking of major business school rankings:
Oct 2006
Economist Intelligence Unit
(US schools only)
Oct 2006
Business Week
Sept 2006
Wall Street Journal
April 2006
U.S. News & World Report
Jan 2006
Financial Times
(US schools only)
August 2005
Forbes</p>
<p>1) Wharton (U Penn) 12 2 6 3 1 2
2) Chicago 3 1 11 6 5 3
3) Tuck (Dartmouth) 1 11 2 9 7 1
4) HBS (Harvard) 5 4 14 1 2 7
5) Stanford 2 6 18 2 3 6
6) Columbia 9 10 4 7 4 4
7) Kellogg (Northwestern) 4 3 6 4 12 10
8) Haas (Berkeley) 8 8 5 7 11 15
9) Ross (U Michigan) 6 5 1 11 10 26
10) Sloan (MIT) 13 7 10 4 8 18
11) Stern (NYU) 6 14 17 13 6 13
12) Yale SOM 15 19 9 15 9 5
13) Darden (UVA) 9 15 13 13 14 8
14) Anderson (UCLA) 11 12 19 10 13 14
15) Fuqua (Duke) 19 9 12 11 15 20
16) Johnson (Cornell) 14 13 16 16 19 9
17) Tepper (CMU) 18 16 3 16 24 16
18) Kenan-Flagler (UNC) 23 17 8 20 16 14</p>
<p>
[quote]
Wow, the level of oversimplification in your statement is astounding.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Wow, the level of rudeness in your statement is astounding. </p>
<p>When I write posts with plenty of detail, people complain that my posts are just too long. You can't win. No matter how I post, I am either oversimplifying things for some people, or making things too complicated for others. You can't win. </p>
<p>But look, Bedhead, if you don't like my posts, don't read them. </p>
<p>
[quote]
That's the thing about rankings: you have to consider what they emphasize, what lies underneath. And likewise you shouldn't assume Harvard and Stanford, simply because of their cachet, do all things right or well. You simply don't know this with any level of generalizable confidence. Nor do I. It's the recruiters surveyed are the ones who do.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't think anybody here has ever said or implied that Harvard and Stanford do all things right or well. </p>
<p>What I have said is that recruiter satisfaction is a flawed metric. Let's be honest. Not a lot of prospective students are going to turn down HBS for North Carolina, despite the fact that recruiter satisfaction tends to be higher at the latter. A better metric would be student satisfaction. After all, it's the students who are the ultimate customers of a business school, as they are the ones who are paying for it. Whether the recruiters happen to be satisfied or not is a secondary consideration. If the students are highly satisfied, in the sense that they are getting the jobs that they want, what does it matter if the recruiters are unsatisfied? </p>
<p>
[quote]
They ride on their reputations and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that good students will opt for them. But that breeds complacency, which is something that Sakky's theory doesn't take into account as being a real experience that recruiters have, apart from the sour grapes which legitimately can occur.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Sure, it doesn't take complacency into account. But so what? The fact of the matter is that some schools are complacent because they can be. Maybe it's not fair, maybe it's not right, but that's just the way it is. School prestige benefits from economic network effects, meaning that a school that becomes highly prestigious will be able to attract a higher quality of students/recruiters, which will turn enhance its prestige, hence attracting an even higher quality of students/recruiters, etc. This is what Harvard has been doing for generations. This is especially so when you're talking about B-schools as so much of the value of the MBA has to do with the access to a high-powered alumni network, and it's hard to argue that the HBS alumni network is not extremely high-powered. </p>
<p>Hence, Harvard can afford to be complacent, at least for awhile. Sure, I agree that some day, Harvard might lose its prestige and hence will no longer be able to afford to be complacent. But let's face it. Whether we like it or not, Harvard is not going to become unprestigious anytime soon, heck probably not in our lifetimes. Let's face it. Whether we like it or not, Harvard is Harvard. Even if somebody were to come up with some quantitative ranking that ranked Harvard low, many of the best candidates in the world would still choose to go to Harvard just because it's Harvard. It's not fair, it's not right, but that's how it is, like it or not.</p>
<p>
[quote]
What I have said is that recruiter satisfaction is a flawed metric.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>And my point is you live in a dream world if you think it's a flawed metric, and I offered a view backed by real world experience to show why this should be so. However, I would agree with a different contention, maybe one that you were really trying to get at -- i.e. that it's one metric, of many important ones and insufficient on its own, that would determine the validity of general rankings.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The fact of the matter is that some schools are complacent because they can be.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The logical end of your statement, therefore, is that all that matters is some kind of a priori prestige, not efforts or investments schools make to improve themselves. And in your placement among schools of a priori prestige, Harvard and Stanford clearly rank at the top, in some strong way belying the other statement:</p>
<p>
[quote]
I don't think anybody here has ever said or implied that Harvard and Stanford do all things right or well.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>
[quote]
Wow, the level of rudeness in your statement is astounding.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You started a debate with a pedantic and strongly worded statement; my attack was on the soundness of your statement, not on you per se. You don't have to read my posts either, so if I shouldn't be able to respond to you and take you to task, why should you afford yourself the same privilege?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Whether we like it or not, Harvard is Harvard.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>And therefore there's no point in any school evaluating itself with an end to improving itself? And there's no value in any magazine or newspaper ranking a professional schools ability to launch its student into a profession, as measured by a significant pool of gatekeepers to that profession?</p>
<p>
[quote]
A better metric would be student satisfaction. After all, it's the students who are the ultimate customers of a business school, as they are the ones who are paying for it. Whether the recruiters happen to be satisfied or not is a secondary consideration.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>But no student is ever in a good position to make solid comparisons between a school they've attended and scores of others they haven't. Look, I am not arguing for a monocular view toward recruiter satisfaction only. But student rankings of any validity would have to be carefully calibrated, and I think on the face of things, would necessarily be of much lower quality than recruiter rankings. Recruiters would presumably have much less built-in bias.</p>
<p>
[quote]
No matter how I post, I am either oversimplifying things for some people, or making things too complicated for others. You can't win.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, in this case you shortchanged yourself, not through being brief -- you really weren't -- but in positing an oversimplification. To be sure, there were some iotas of truth in what you said, but you missed the big picture.</p>
<p>As for other people and what they think, it shouldn't affect your ability to make a cogent and defensible proposition.</p>
<p>
[quote]
And my point is you live in a dream world if you think it's a flawed metric, and I offered a view backed by real world experience to show why this should be so.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Huh? At the end of the day, it's still a flawed metric. It's like measuring the quality of the school solely by, say, its endowment size. Either way, the metric has little to do with the quality of the school. </p>
<p>
[quote]
The logical end of your statement, therefore, is that all that matters is some kind of a priori prestige, not efforts or investments schools make to improve themselves. And in your placement among schools of a priori prestige, Harvard and Stanford clearly rank at the top, in some strong way belying the other statement:
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Uh, when did I say that? First off, efforts/investments that school make to improve themselves WILL aid their prestige. As a case in point, Berkeley-Haas didn't always used to be considered the high-prestige B-school that it is now. They got there because they made significant investments over the last 10-15 years. </p>
<p>But ultimately, we cannot deny that Harvard and Stanford (and Wharton) have a strong lock on the top. Can that change? Of course! But it hasn't changed yet, and clearly not because of any sole influence from a recruiter ranking. Let's face it. Not too many people are turning down Harvard or Stanford to go to North Carolina just because the WSJ recruiters like UNC better. </p>
<p>
[quote]
You started a debate with a pedantic and strongly worded statement; my attack was on the soundness of your statement, not on you per se. You don't have to read my posts either, so if I shouldn't be able to respond to you and take you to task, why should you afford yourself the same privilege?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I simply offered my opinion about what I think. You then chose to engage in attacks. You are free to offer your opinions. But I am free to offer mine. </p>
<p>You say that what I wrote was an oversimplification. Of course anything that I write is an oversimplification! Just like anything you write is an oversimplification. I can't write an entire book. Anything that I write will inherently exclude some things, just like anything that you write will inherently exclude some things. What exactly do you expect to happen? </p>
<p>
[quote]
And therefore there's no point in any school evaluating itself with an end to improving itself? And there's no value in any magazine or newspaper ranking a professional schools ability to launch its student into a profession, as measured by a significant pool of gatekeepers to that profession?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, you tell me. Who here seriously thinks that North Carolina is a better B-school than is HBS? How many people will turn down HBS for North Carolina? In fact, I would surmise that even most current UNC MBA students would probably concede that they would rather be going to HBS, but just didn't get in (or perhaps couldn't afford it). A ranking that places UNC many places above HBS therefore speaks more to the shortcomings of the ranking than it does the shortcomings of HBS. </p>
<p>Now, that's not to say that HBS will stay on top until the end of time. It is clearly true that some day HBS may no longer be considered an elite B-school, and that, in particular, UNC may well be considered to be a better B-school than HBS. But I think we can all agree that that's not going to happen anytime in the near-future. </p>
<p>
[quote]
But no student is ever in a good position to make solid comparisons between a school they've attended and scores of others they haven't. Look, I am not arguing for a monocular view toward recruiter satisfaction only. But student rankings of any validity would have to be carefully calibrated, and I think on the face of things, would necessarily be of much lower quality than recruiter rankings. Recruiters would presumably have much less built-in bias.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Uh, no, I would argue that recruiters have MORE bias. Much more. Again, it is for the reasons I said. Keep in mind that recruiters are not on the side of the students. The easiest way to make recruiters "satisfied" is to just have your students agree to take jobs for less pay, and to have them willing to take mediocre jobs in undesirable locations that nobody else really wants. If your students are willing to do that, then surely, recruiters will be smiling like Cheshire cats. Recruiters HATE dealing with students who have strong negotiating leverage. </p>
<p>But as a student, negotiating leverage is precisely what you want. That's how you're going to be able to get the highest pay possible. That's how you're going to get the best job you can get. </p>
<p>I agree that student satisfaction is not a perfect measure either. But it is clearly better than recruiter satisfaction. Recruiters are not your friends. If they had their druthers, they would pay everybody as little as possible while making them work in the jobs that nobody else in the company wants. Students obviously want the exact opposite. </p>
<p>Furthermore, what of those students who never talk to recruiters anyway? What of those students that go down the entrepreneurial path and start their own companies right after B-school? These students never deal with recruiters. Recruiter satisfaction is irrelevent to these students. Such a metric would therefore be meaningless to those schools like Stanford that produce a lot of startup activity. Heck, such a metric would actually arguably be counterproductive to such schools, as recruiters most likely don't appreciate not being able to find potential hires because the students would rather found startups. But who cares if the recruiters don't appreciate it? That's what the students want to do. </p>
<p>Furthermore, if you've really worked in a B-school setting, then you will know that many students don't get jobs through recruiters. They get them through their own network of contacts. For example, I know one guy who graduated from an elite B-school who got into a (small) hedge fund just because he happened to do a class project with another student who was a year ahead of him and then went to that hedge fund such that when he was graduating, he just called up his old buddy and got hooked up. No recruiters involved. I know another guy who got a wonderful job as manager of China operations of a small manufacturing company by calling up some of his pals from the old days and telling them that he was graduating and looking for a job. Heck, Steve Ballmer dropped out of Stanford GSB because his old Harvard college buddy, Bill Gates, offered him a job at Microsoft. In all of these cases, recruiters were never involved. Recruiters therefore see only a subset of the total activity that students are involved in. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Well, in this case you shortchanged yourself, not through being brief -- you really weren't -- but in positing an oversimplification. To be sure, there were some iotas of truth in what you said, but you missed the big picture.</p>
<p>As for other people and what they think, it shouldn't affect your ability to make a cogent and defensible proposition.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>And I think I have - in spades. At the end of the day, I believe recruiter satisfaction means little. That is my point, and I have backed it up. You are free to disagree, but that is my opinion. </p>
<p>And again, was it an oversimplification? Of course! Every post in the world is an oversimplification, as every post inherently excludes certain details. I can't talk about every single detail until the end of time. Nobody can.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Huh? At the end of the day, it's still a flawed metric.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>My point is that it's a sound metric, but an incomplete one, for measuring the general quality of a school which should encompass a lot of factors and measures. I think that's what you were trying to say too, but you are stuck with the verbiage "flawed metric" which I find to be overstated. Surely you'd agree customer service questionnaires are important to determining whether customers are actually satisfied.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Uh, no, I would argue that recruiters have MORE bias. Much more. Again, it is for the reasons I said. Keep in mind that recruiters are not on the side of the students. The easiest way to make recruiters "satisfied" is to just have your students agree to take jobs for less pay, and to have them willing to take mediocre jobs in undesirable locations that nobody else really wants.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Sorry, but you're simply just flat out wrong. Recruiters do want yield, but they generally want your best students and not the idiots who can't get any other offers and are willing to sell themselves short. Remember, these people are hired to go and apply their skills and judgement on behalf of the company; if they are too stupid to negotiate something close to the best possible salary for that company, how will they be for the company? I think you have the beginnings of street savvy, but your statement is really naive. It's a balancing act.</p>
<p>
[quote]
My point is that it's a sound metric, but an incomplete one,
[/quote]
</p>
<p>And that's precisely my point. More specifically, there are other metrics that are more telling. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Sorry, but you're simply just flat out wrong. Recruiters do want yield, but they generally want your best students and not the idiots who can't get any other offers and are willing to sell themselves short. Remember, these people are hired to go and apply their skills and judgement on behalf of the company; if they are too stupid to negotiate something close to the best possible salary for that company, how will they be for the company? I think you have the beginnings of street savvy, but your statement is really naive. It's a balancing act.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Uh, no, I'm afraid that YOU are the one who is flat our wrong, or naive. Sure, recruiters want the best students. But they also want the best students who are also willing to take not-so-good offers because they don't know that there are better offers out there that they can get, or don't have the negotiating leverage to get those better offers.</p>
<p>In other words, what recruiters really want are students who don't have negotiating leverage. Sure, you as a student might be a superstar who knows in his heart that he is a superstar. But if nobody else is willing to give you a strong job offer, then it doesn't really matter. You might know that you deserve a top job offer. But if for whatever reason nobody is willing to give that to you (i.e. because you happen to go to a less prestigious B-school), then it doesn't matter what you 'know'. All that matters is what job you can actually get. Recruiters always want to have to compete against less competition from other top recruiters.</p>
<p>Let me use an analogy. Let's talk about dating. Let's say that you're a guy who's not tall, not handsome, and not athletic. Then, you know, sadly, that you're going to have to work harder to find a date, and you probably won't end up with the girl that you really want. Sad but true. You might know in your heart that you are going to be the dream boyfriend to the girl that you end up with. But that knowledge doesn't matter, as most girls won't even give you a chance. Sad but true. Similarly, you might know that you're going to be a kickbutt employee for whatever company hires you. But if the top companies just don't even give you an offer, then it doesn't really matter. You still end up having to settle for whatever you can get, because at the end of the job, you need a job to pay your bills, and you can't wait around foreverfor the top employers to just "realize" how good you really are. You have to take whatever you can get. To think otherwise is naive.</p>
<p>I suspect that many of the MBA students who attend lesser MBA programs could probably do very well if they were given a chance to work at Goldman Sachs or a top private equity firm or hedge fund. But, fair or unfair, most of them won't even be given that chance. That's life. If you're not given that chance, you unfortunately have to settle for whatever you can get.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Let me use an analogy. Let's talk about dating. Let's say that you're a guy who's not tall, not handsome, and not athletic. Then, you know, sadly, that you're going to have to work harder to find a date, and you probably won't end up with the girl that you really want. Sad but true. You might know in your heart that you are going to be the dream boyfriend to the girl that you end up with. But that knowledge doesn't matter, as most girls won't even give you a chance. Sad but true.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Thanks for the explanation, but it really wasn't needed. I understood your point the first time. It wasn't complex. My lack of embracing it wasn't because I didn't get it. I think it's pedantic of you to assume that is the case.</p>
<p>Your point essentially is that ranking schools according to recruiter ratings is not worthwhile because recruiters should, at the best business schools, actually feel spurned. This, you maintain, is a sign of a superior school; better students, more sought after, have to say no to a lot of companies.</p>
<p>My point is that this is a drastic oversimplification of how recruiters rate schools and the value of those ratings. I base this on several years of experience at a top business school watching how the process works and actually talking to recruiters.</p>
<p>You base your conclusions, essentially, on a bit of game theory. There are kernels of truth in what you say, but again it is a drastic and naive oversimplification that doesn't hold up to the light of reality. </p>
<p>For someone who says to others, if you don't like what I write just ignore it, you spend an awful lot of time responding to what others say.</p>
<p>What I would agree with, as I said, is a contention that recruiter ratings should not solely drive MBA rankings.</p>
<p>And since you keep falling back on the Harvard vs. UNC comparison: I think Harvard is a superior business school, but it's quite possible that UNC does a more professional job in terms of the recruiting process. These kinds of rankings -- and underlying surveys -- can uncover such unexpected pockets of quality.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Your point essentially is that ranking schools according to recruiter ratings is not worthwhile because recruiters should, at the best business schools, actually feel spurned. This, you maintain, is a sign of a superior school; better students, more sought after, have to say no to a lot of companies.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, I am not saying that recruiters "should" feel spurned. I am simply saying that it's a natural outcome of the process. Again, to come back to my analogy, if I looked like Brad Pitt, I would surely be spurning lots of women just because of how many women would want to be with me, but I can't be with all of them. But of course, most men don't look like Brad Pitt, so they don't even get the opportunity to spurn lots of women. {Heck, they're the ones who tend to get spurned.} I wouldn't say that the spurning should happen, rather, it just happens whether we like it or not. </p>
<p>
[quote]
My point is that this is a drastic oversimplification of how recruiters rate schools and the value of those ratings. I base this on several years of experience at a top business school watching how the process works and actually talking to recruiters.</p>
<p>You base your conclusions, essentially, on a bit of game theory. There are kernels of truth in what you say, but again it is a drastic and naive oversimplification that doesn't hold up to the light of reality.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, of course I have to simpify the matter. What do you expect? Even now, some people here complain vociferously that my posts are too long. Yet when I try to shorten my posts, I inevitably leave something out, and then other people complain that I'm not including some details. So either way, you can't win. Somebody always complains. </p>
<p>However, at the end of the day, the salient point is that recruiter satisfaction is not a particularly telling metric, and student satisfaction captures far more important information. Like I said before, who cares if the recruiters are dissatisfied as long as the students are satisfied? </p>
<p>
[quote]
For someone who says to others, if you don't like what I write just ignore it, you spend an awful lot of time responding to what others say.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Uh, that's because I don't dislike what you wrote.</p>
<p>
[quote]
And since you keep falling back on the Harvard vs. UNC comparison: I think Harvard is a superior business school, but it's quite possible that UNC does a more professional job in terms of the recruiting process. These kinds of rankings -- and underlying surveys -- can uncover such unexpected pockets of quality.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Surely nobody is denying that UNC is a fine B-school and probably does do some things better than Harvard does. But at the end of the day, I think there would be little dispute that most UNC MBA students would rather be going to Harvard (but didn't get in), but very few Harvard MBA students would rather be going to UNC.</p>
<p>Sakky, you present an excellent viewpoint on why recruiter brownie points don't matter as much as some rankings would claim: because recruiters' interests are often not congruent to a student's. </p>
<p>BedHead, you have a sound reason in assuming that the surveyors are careful/clever in sussing out if recruiters are giving honest opinion of students, or voicing their frustrations with students who ended up with too much bargaining power. </p>
<p>Frankly, I am inclined towards sakky's interpretation because any ranking that seems to weigh on recruiter points always includes some writeup with the recruiters lamenting how students wouldn't respond to their phone calls, wouldn't show up for interviews, and such. This is baloney. No one who is smart enough to go to, say, Stanford, will knowingly stand a corporate recruiter up. The problem is more likely that the recruiter could not have his way and cribbed it out when they got the chance. Good for students, bad for recruiters. As such, as a student, I don't see how this reflects poorly on a school. </p>
<p>But it's difficult to make a claim either way without reading the actual survey. I am skeptical that the ranking folks were really all that astute. </p>
<p>(Btw, I cannot think of anything that UNC does better than HBS. Anything.)</p>
<p>
[quote]
Btw, I cannot think of anything that UNC does better than HBS. Anything.
[/quote]
Do you know UNC and HBS well?</p>
<p>
[quote]
But it's difficult to make a claim either way without reading the actual survey. I am skeptical that the ranking folks were really all that astute.
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<p>That's really the key point. </p>
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because recruiters' interests are often not congruent to a student's.
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<p>This truism doesn't prove the overall point. I would argue that the recruiters' interests are almost never congruent with the students, though there may be significant overlap. Arguably, the better the student is the less overlap there will be in interests: the better student will likely have a lot more people interested and would want to game the system to obtain the best, richest offer. The recruiter just wants to make a deal with the highest quality at an acceptable price.</p>
<p>My point is that there are essentially at least two elements to this puzzle: 1) The point that Sakky makes which certainly has a kernel of truth as I've always said; and 2) The management of the recruiting function as a whole. University of Chicago was widely respected by its peers for how it implemented this function.</p>
<p>There is undoubtedly a "sour grapes" element to how companies are treated sometimes in the recruiting process. But I've also seen a lot of companies say that the market just went against them and they understand that their yield is a separate question from whether or not the process is good.</p>
<p>But my point is a) don't assume it's one or the other or b) just 'cause you think certain schools are better that they always do things better. The obvious counter to this is the statement that UNC is not as good as Harvard -- in any way. But what about Columbia?</p>
<p>Yep. Anything specific you want to know?</p>
<p>Bedhead, the biggest problem with a recruiter-based ranking is that these supposedly satisfied recruiters may not be the ones a student wants at all. Given that recruiters are not revealed, I am left to believe that whatever bscool feeder firm is flung into this arbitrary pool of 'recruiters' by WSJ should match my own interests in an MBA. I doubt it. </p>
<p>I would rather go by the satisfaction level of students, or even the world at large, but not that of recruiters. They have too much at stake to be overly truthful. Remember, they're the demand. The students constitute the supply. I notice that recruiters don't spend any nervous months waiting for acceptance letters and then slogging their derierre off to get to the best avenue feasible. </p>
<p>I am myself a recruiter now (for a company that would seem to be popular on campuses) and I love to be on this side of the equation. </p>
<p>If I were to give you my vested professional opinion, of course I'd like to tote the case of Tuck and Haas. But neither I nor any of my peer recruiters would be knobs enough to believe that the caliber of students from the more generally higher-ranked schools (US News still remains the most solid, imho, with BW hitting the spot from time to time) will not be much better. It all boils down to yield and all those delightful games, but we do know well where the hot talent is. Make no mistake about it. </p>
<p>For better or for worse, I don't lurk on these fora as a professional. I come here as a once-starry-eyed student who wanted the best for herself, and I'm thankful that jokes like WSJ weren't around to muddle the pond. (In fact, we barely had such online avenues at all.)</p>
<p>Btw, these days, Yale is considered on par with Tuck for exactly the same reasons. They both represent a similar pool for us. If WSJ put Tuck at the helm and Yale at no. 8, then the ranking's two swans short of a lake.</p>
<p>I heard that the University of Chicago tried to mimic the WSJ rankings (probably to debunk it) by surveying recruiters in a similiar fashion. Recruiters placed Princeton in the top 3 for graduate business school programs. </p>
<p>That being said, nobody should need to do a study to realize that the WSJ rankings are wack.</p>
<p>Recruiter satisfaction is a measure of overperformance. Student satisfaction is another measure of overperformance.</p>
<p>That is why each one of these is flawed. They measure results vs. expectations, if a kid gets 200k a year out of UNC, satisfaction is huge. Out of Harvard, pretty happy. If a recruiter gets a ton of good people for cheap, satisfaction goes up.</p>
<p>And so on...</p>