Ranking the rankings

[hercules]

Enough of a bad thing already. I keep finding more business school rankings. Most of them have atrocious methodlogies and they give different rankings to differentiate themselves. They also increase the cost of an MBA by making the schools submit materials to all of them.

I say we turn the tables on these rankers. They don’t mind poking and prodding the schools but I wonder how they’d like it if they were ranked.

[hercules]

Business Week: Base their rankings too much off what a few students think at one moment of time. Ranked Stanford #11 a few years ago. At least they are profitable at making the rankings look important and shifting the schools all around every two years. Thier book is a best seller.

WSJ: Pathetic. They don’t even understand their own rankings and never ran a sanity check on them. Look at how low Stanford is ranked. They probably don’t make money off the rankings and just make the rest of their organization look stupid.

US News: They act as if they have quantified the process and made it scientific. The writers did not do well/ would not do well on the GMAT with this flawed logic.

Financial Times: I’m not interested in European schools. No comment. Anyone else?

Business 2.0: Johnny come lately. Their rankings and explanations add nothing but confusion to what is already avaivailable. They appear to have a 100 year plan to become good and popular.

Jungle: See Business 2.0

[keenomacdaddy]

Bored at work today? []

[Posc]

Dude don’t blow a gakset!

Seriously, this is a pretty good gripe thread for the ranking of rankings. I don’t think I’m the only one whose opniion of WSJ fell after reading their rankings.

All or nothing

[hercules]

Just be glad I dont work in a post office [}]

[ahua]

Perhaps the fact that over 1,000 people have now read this will be of some consolation. []

[y82benji]

That’s a really awesome post – might be an interesting article idea for a major competitor of theirs (the journals you mentioned) in the news journal market that doesn’t publish business school rankings. Sell your idea!

[Posc]

There are plenty of articles railing rankings but people still soil their pants when Harvard and Stanford aren’t ranked 1 and 2. []

Support terrorists. Vote Bush out of office.

[y82benji]

quote:

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Originally posted by Posc

There are plenty of articles railing rankings but people still soil their pants when Harvard and Stanford aren’t ranked 1 and 2. []

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I definitely agree. But I bet it is because there is so much money tied into those schools. Those donors need the rankings to feel like they’re getting something for their money.

[kcarthic]

Is there a sure way of telling which school fits best for every field say Finance/banking,non-profit org,etc.

And you people believe rankings by WSJ/FT/USnews aren’t accurate.
So you mean that simply evaluating yourselves is the best way.

[y82benji]

There are certain factors like history, “name,” and finances that inevitably influence rankings of schools. Sure no one can deny Harvard is one of the ten best schools in the United States, but how do you decide that they are #1 or #2? There are too many factors to consider to ever produce a completely accurate ranking. That doesn’t mean that these rankings are completely erroneous or that the best ranking is my personal evaluation. That would be quite a leap to take. How well the individual and the school fit each other better determines their success than anything else, and the rankings can’t measure that. They can only measure test scores and statistics (which can always be twisted to show what you want to show).

The best way to find which school is best is to gather together as much information as possible. That includes rankings, the opinions of major employers in that specific field of the graduates from a particular school, and an understanding of the teaching/learning process in the program and whether or not that is the process you want. As for “sure way”… all the top schools are going to offer some strong programs – in the end the “X” factor is the student, not the school.

[hercules]

Yes I do feel good people have read this. [8D]

Y82benji said it very well but yes I do beleive a ranking should be done by the individual. If Kellogg is a good school for you don’t worry that it is not Ivy League. If a school is currently ranked 6 or 11 don’t dismiss it because its not top 5 or 10.

Remember how much info these rankers ask for and think how much that costs the school. What a f’d up system where the rankers make $$ adn the schools and students pay the $$ to gather the info. [!]

[IHateCats]

quote:

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Originally posted by ahua

Perhaps the fact that over 1,000 people have now read this will be of some consolation. []

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If 1,000 people was consolation, the fact it’s near 3,500 should be completed therapy. []

[hercules]

I hadn’t been here in quite a long time. One of my buddies told me to check out this thread. Over 7,000. Damn! Wish I had a royalty agreement [:o)]

Hope it helped raise some consciousness.

[lavelle]

Hercules, you really need to do some research. I’m the editor who is responsible for b-school rankings at BusinessWeek. The last time we ranked full time MBA programs in 2004, we had more than 10,000 replies to our student survey. Since our methodology also incorporates two previous student surveys (3 in all) our ranking that year was based on nearly 32,000 replies going back to 2000–hardly “a few students…at one moment in time.” I’ll also point out that the student survey counts for only 45% of the final ranking. Another 45% comes from a recruiter survey, and the remaining 10% is from our intellectual capital rating–an analysis of every article published by every faculty member at every school in about 20 academic journals. All this information, by the way, is readily available in the magazine and online.

quote:

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Originally posted by hercules

Business Week: Base their rankings too much off what a few students think at one moment of time. Ranked Stanford #11 a few years ago. At least they are profitable at making the rankings look important and shifting the schools all around every two years. Thier book is a best seller.

WSJ: Pathetic. They don’t even understand their own rankings and never ran a sanity check on them. Look at how low Stanford is ranked. They probably don’t make money off the rankings and just make the rest of their organization look stupid.

US News: They act as if they have quantified the process and made it scientific. The writers did not do well/ would not do well on the GMAT with this flawed logic.

Financial Times: I’m not interested in European schools. No comment. Anyone else?

Business 2.0: Johnny come lately. Their rankings and explanations add nothing but confusion to what is already avaivailable. They appear to have a 100 year plan to become good and popular.

Jungle: See Business 2.0

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Louis Lavelle
Associate Editor
BusinessWeek

[Author]

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