Ranking the rankings

[shomalik]

quote:

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Originally posted by 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

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Hi Louis, when will you guys join the 21st century and provide rankings for the Asian MBAs?

[budlightgal]

quote:

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Originally posted by 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

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Louis,

If your ranking incorporates the past 2, how come a school can hardly move for a while and then suddenly jump or fall tremendously?

I’d also love to know how Stanford ended up outside the top 10.

Someone I forget who said it best when they said rankings have to jump around to sell editions. You have tenured faculty and students who stick around for a few years. How can schools change so much in such short periods of time?

If the answer is that there is very little difference between them, then why rank them if it’s for some reason other than profit?

Amber

[JayHawk4Life]

I give Louis credit for showing up and defending his rankings, but his words ring hollow and I agree with Amber.

[Louis]

quote:

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Originally posted by budlightgal

quote:

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Originally posted by 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

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Louis,

If your ranking incorporates the past 2, how come a school can hardly move for a while and then suddenly jump or fall tremendously?

I’d also love to know how Stanford ended up outside the top 10.

Someone I forget who said it best when they said rankings have to jump around to sell editions. You have tenured faculty and students who stick around for a few years. How can schools change so much in such short periods of time?

If the answer is that there is very little difference between them, then why rank them if it’s for some reason other than profit?

Amber

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Amber, what schools “jump or fall tremendously”???The last time we did the fulltime mba ranking in 2006 the top 30 schools were virtually identical to the top 30 from 2004 (only one, Michigan State, was not in the 2004 top 30). Only four schools out of the 30 moved more than 3 spots. Since 1988, when we first launched the ranking, the top 3 slots have been shared by 7 schools, and three of those got in exactly one time each–so basically 4 schools in the top three since the very beginning. Northwestern has NEVER been out of the top 3. You make it sound like there’s a complete shake-up every two years. There’s not. You’re flat out wrong.

How did Stanford end up outside the top 10? It didn’t. It was ranked No. 6 in 2006, No. 4 in 2004, and No. 4 in 2002. In fact the ONLY time it landed outside the top 10 since 1988 was in 2000, when it was ranked at No. 11.

I’m going to let all of you in a little secret. RANKINGS DON’T SELL SQUAT. BusinessWeek’s worldwide circulation is pretty close to a million copies, of which maybe 30,000 or so are newstand sales. If anybody is picking up the magazine from a newstand because the rankings are on the cover (once every TWO years) they’re not making anyone rich. And I really don’t think anyone SUBSCRIBES to the magazine for the rankings, not when they’re all available online for FREE.

Even if rankings did make a bundle for the magazine, since when is that a sin? Last I checked, that’s pretty much the whole purpose of an MBA–to learn how to make a profit for your company. It’s a little hypocritical to accuse BW for harboring some awful profit motive when pretty much everyone reading this is doing the exact same thing.

You guys really need to come up with better arguments against the rankings, because the ones you’ve come up with so far are laughable. Do your homework. Get your facts straight. And come back when you have something that makes sense. I won’t hold my breath.

Louis Lavelle, Associate Editor, BusinessWeek

[S.U.D.I.O.]

Well, I may have figured out something wrong with the rankings. Human error. Amber said to sell editions of the rankings guide and Louis interpreted that to mean subscriptions.

Louis also mentioned Stanford was ranked 11 in 2000 and apparently missed the time stamp from early 2004. Still, I doubt there were 10 schools better than Stanford 9 years ago or 29 years ago.

Hopefully he will have another brainfart soon and completely drop HBS or Wharton completely from the rankings and that will make it easier for me to get in.

[kaushalasp]

This is a pretty cool thread!

[Greeni2]

Great thread going here, I’ll just add my two cents in as well. For business school rankings I like bschool.com – lots of articles and different information on business schools and degrees. Helped me a lot when I was applying last year.

[kachoona]

This thread is pure gold!

[Author]

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