U.S. News and World Report

U.S. News and World Report has been ranking American graduate business programs since 1990, and colleges since 1983. Sixty percent of the data is provided by the school. The remainder comes from surveys of deans and recruiters. The ranking of the top-50 schools is published annually in late March or early April.

35% Salary and employment rates
Of the most recent graduating class

25% Selectivity in admissions (GMAT score, grade point average, etc.)
Of the most recent class to enter

25% Peer assessment
A survey of business school deans and directors of over 400 programs nationwide

15% Recruiter assessment
Schools contribute recruiter names to a large pool; a selection is surveyed

Pros:

• Highlights school reputation and student caliber
• Stable (low volatility) and balanced in criteria
• Presents data and scores along with rank; allows ties; clustering visible

Cons:

• Lacks input from students
• Relies on schools to report data faithfully
• Salaries not adjusted for cost of living
• Peer assessment arguably reflects historical reputation more than current condition

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Bloomberg Businessweek

Bloomberg Businessweek (formerly BusinessWeek) began ranking MBA programs in 1988 and is now the oldest continual ranking of MBA programs in the country. Since its inception, this ranking has been about customer satisfaction. The “customers” in this case are students and recruiters, whose opinions make up 90 percent of the weight of the survey. The ranking of the top 30 schools (50 online) is published biennially in even-numbered years in late October.

45% Student survey
Graduating students complete an online survey of 50 questions, evaluating from one to ten many aspects of the program.

45% Recruiter survey
Corporate recruiters around the nation rank up to 20 schools at which they have recruited in recent years and state the number of hires made at each.

10% Intellectual capital
The number of articles published by the school’s full-time faculty in 20 top journals is summed over a five-year period and adjusted for faculty size. First added to the ranking in 2000.

Pros:

• Captures the opinions of actual students and recruiters who are doing the hiring
• Counters volatility: current year results for student and recruiter surveys comprise 50 percent of total rank; each of the two most recent surveys, 25 percent

Cons:

• Student opinion easily swayed by popular or unpopular changes that may have little to do with program quality or academic rigor
• Recruiter satisfaction related to ability to fill a specific position, not necessarily real assessment of student quality, or preparation for career path
• Only one “high-level recruiting contact per company” surveyed; said contact, especially with large national firms, frequently not the one recruiting at school
• Lacking scores and data; ties not allowed; clusters and gaps hidden; large numbers of schools possibly in statistical tie
• Until 2010 only the top 20-30 schools ranked; the rest left in nebulous “second-tier” category

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Forbes

Forbes is focused on one main issue: return on investment. First published in 2000, the ranking compares alumni salaries five years after the MBA with their program’s tuition and the salary forgone to pursue the degree. The ranking of the top 50 schools (75 online) is published biennially in odd-numbered years in early August.

100% Salary and Tuition
Alumni are queried on salary figures for three of the first five years after graduation, as well as their salary prior to starting the MBA program. Schools supply tuition for respective years. Salaries are adjusted for cost-of-living expenses and discounted for earning gains, using a rate tied to money market yields.

Pros:

• The ONLY survey to adjust salary figures for cost of living; arguably puts salary into a much needed context

Cons:

• One dimensional: doesn’t speak to the quality of the education or the student experience
• Salaries possibly misreported by alumni especially given context of school ranking; possible sample bias

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Financial Times

First published in 2000, Financial Times is a smorgasbord of criteria, with salary/career and faculty prowess strongly represented. The ranking is global in scope and privileges factors that favor non-U.S. schools. Sixty percent of the data comes from the school, 40 percent from alumni three years post-MBA. The annual ranking of 100 schools appears in January.

54% Salary and employment-related issues
Includes salary 3 yrs post MBA, increase from pre-MBA, changes in seniority

20% Faculty and doctoral prowess
Publications, percentage with Ph.D., number of doctoral graduates

15% Diversity of faculty, students and school’s advisory council
Percentage of women and non-U.S. citizens only

7% Alumni satisfaction
With career services, with aims achieved; future recruitment at alma mater

4% Extent to which program is internationalized
International exposure during program, additional languages required

Pros:

• Global in scope
• Allows for ties in rank
• Salaries adjusted for industry sectors
• Counters volatility: 56 percent of survey involves weighted “memory” with previous years: 50 percent current year, 25 percent for each of two previous surveys ‘

Cons:

• Does not provide index scores; clustering and gaps largely hidden
• Salaries not adjusted for cost of living; salaries in Europe and Middle East significantly higher than U.S. salaries in recent years
• Ignores fact that some foreign MBA programs are closer in class profile to what in the U.S. would be an executive MBA program; not apples to apples
• International bias: 20 percent favors criteria at which non-U.S. schools will excel (Note: In 2001 only 19% of the top-25 schools were international, compared with 48% in 2012)
• Criteria oddly chosen: gender and citizenship diversity, number of doctoral students produced, are weighted heavily for survey meant to address quality of MBA program
• Uses its own MBA rankings to determine prestige of doctoral student placement; biased

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The Economist

First published in 2002, The Economist ranking is similar in many respects to Financial Times’: it examines many criteria; salary and career placement are heavily weighted; and it is global in scope and privileges factors that favor non-U.S. schools. It differs from Financial Times in weighting student satisfaction with the program more heavily, and including some admissions criteria. Eighty percent of the data comes from the school, 20 percent from the most recent class to graduate. The annual ranking of 100 schools appears in late September through mid-October.

38% Salary and employment-related issues
Starting salary, increase from pre-MBA, jobs obtained through career services

23% Student assessment of program
Satisfaction with career services, faculty, program, facilities, etc.

14% Admissions criteria and diversity
GMAT average, work experience, percentage women and non-U.S. citizens

9% Program and faculty issues
Foreign languages, international exchange, faculty: student ratio, faculty with Ph.D.s

9% Recruiter diversity
Diversity by industry

7% Alumni network
Size and international scope

Pros:

• Global in scope
• Counters volatility: current year results comprise 50 percent of total rank; 30 percent allotted to previous year; 20 percent to year before that
• Students surveyed give input on weightings, which are changed slightly from year to year

Cons:

• Main ranking table appears with rank only; no data (detailed information listed in separate entries by school, making side-by-side comparisons difficult)
• Index scores not published; ties not allowed; clustering and gaps hidden
• Salaries not adjusted for cost of living; salaries in Europe and Middle East significantly higher than U.S. salaries in recent years
• International bias: 11 percent favors criteria at which non-U.S. schools will excel (citizenship diversity, ratio of students to foreign alumni chapters, number of foreign languages offered); may be less relevant to many U.S. students

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Poets and Quants

First published in 2010, Poets and Quants is not an independent ranking, but simply a composite snapshot of five other major MBA rankings averaged together. The website and ranking was created by John A. Byrne, former editor at BusinessWeek, who introduced the world to MBA rankings more than two decades ago. Each school is given a score for each of the following five surveys based on its rank in each. The scores are multiplied by the weights listed below, summed, and then ordered from top to bottom by an index score. The ranking of 100 schools first appeared in August, but can potentially be updated every time a new MBA ranking appears.

30% Bloomberg Businessweek (biennial)
25% Forbes (biennial)
20% U.S. News and World Report (annual)
15% Financial Times (annual)
10% The Economist

Pros:

• Breadth: averaging five surveys allows a host of criteria to be at play
• Averaging reins in outliers, smoothing out anomalies in a school’s varying ranks
• Index scores make clustering visible
• By underweighting euro-friendly Financial Times and Economist rankings, the ranking more likely reflects interests of American applicants

Cons:

• More like a meta-analysis than a ranking; no actual data is collected
• What is being averaged is not the data, or the scores, but the ranks provided in other rankings, which are already interpretations of other data (with all their methodological problems)
• Index scores, in this light, are less objective than they might appear
• The weighting used in the average (30 percent Businessweek, 20 percent Forbes, etc.) is purely subjective