True but one needs to take into account the GMAT score requirements as well. Stern has 720 GMAT and 14% Selectivity and 4.5k+ applicants, therefore it satisfies all 3 criteria. However, the other schools do not. That’s why some people in this blog have been surprised by the rather severe discount of Stern’s ranking despite being highly competitive across all aspects. Very good discussion and analysis by the way very much appreciated.

lowe I appreciate the dialogue as well and certainly can understand why some question different o unexpected results. Stern is an exceptional school that has many compelling reasons to support it’s place in the top tier of business schools. I believe that time will allow Stern and others schools to move/be recognized within different rankings according to their own results and opinion. Again, this P&Q ranking, which I admire, weights 3 rankings (BW, Forbes, and USN) mot significantly. Accordingly and with respect to Stern, since they were ranked 18th in two of those rankings-15th in P&Q seems reasonable. What I am not saying is that Stern deserved to be 18th in those two rankings…I would have ranked them higher if I were doing the job, but P&Q is just using those ready established numbers. Perhaps the fight is with BW and Forbes not P&Q? Thanks everyone…

I agree that Stern should be in the top 10; however if you look at NYU’s yield, its a bit lower than the other top ranked schools (note – yeild = the percent of students that get into NYU and agree to go)

School Yield
Harvard 84.30%
Stanford 79.70%
Columbia 72.20%
UPenn (Wharton) 71.40%
Michigan (Ross) 70.60%
MIT (Sloan) 64.60%
Chicago (Booth) 60.50%
Cornell (Johnson) 58.60%
Northwestern (Kellogg) 58.20%
Dartmouth (Tuck) 54.50%
NYU (Stern) 53.00%
Duke (Fuqua) 52.90%

Hello John,

just wondering why you were using the Economist Ranking? From what I know, this ranking is not highly regarded, better than the Wall Street Journal ranking, but not that better?

I’m not sure what the confusion is, and why everyone is focusing so strongly on Stern, when it exhibits the same characteristics as Berkeley Haas. Haas has a higher GMAT/GPA average than Stern, a lower admissions rate, and UC Berkeley is overall a more influential institution from a research point of view than Stern. Yet both suffer in rankings compared to Wharton, Booth, Kellogg and Columbia; this is even more notable in Stern’s case, because of the decidedly pro-East Coast nature of the rankings. I will show you what you all seem to be missing, which “new guy” has begun to do.

There are three key factors that affect the admissions rate, and they are not real reflections of competitiveness or quailty: yield, GMAT, and location.

Location is the easiest: Stern and Haas are in amazing locations (The Village in Manhattan and the sunnier, wackier, more intellectual side of the Bay Area), which are a draw for students all over the East Coast and California. That drives up applicant volumes for a finite number of seats. Their locations also afford them direct access to big banks and media for Stern, and the tech culture for Haas – both appealing job markets.

Next comes the GMAT, which accounts for 16% of their USNews raw score. A school’s ranking is the result of a joint effort across administrative departments and usually led by the dean, but where the Admissions Office can help the most is with the GMAT score. Your chances at Stern and Haas become severely handicapped with a sub-700 score, and conversely, you do yourself a real favor with a dazzling score. Compare this to HBS, which truly doesn’t care once you clear 700 and is willing to admit many in the 500 range, or to INSEAD and Wharton, which focus on subscores for competence more than the overall scores for cosmetics. All three are considered better programs than Stern and Haas.

Finally, yield. Stern and Haas are extremely yield-conscious, as is Columbia (its 72% yield is anomalous). With so many applicants, Haas and Stern get to pick and choose who comes into the class, and they are both notorious (Stern more so) for picking and choosing based on yield, making “why this school/prove to us that you have done your homework” an INTEGRAL component of their application. They’ve already weeded out poor GMATs: yield-management immediately allows them to weed out applicants who aren’t truly passionate about their program. If someone has taken the time to properly research the program, it must be some indicator of interest, right? They don’t want to admit you if they know you’re capable of getting into Booth, Wharton or Columbia and have applied to their program as an afterthought. By fine-tuning their yield, they can ensure that they admit the minimum number of students in order to fill their class (and tuition coffers) while sporting the lowest possible acceptance rate, thereby cultivating an aura of exclusivity.

Based on this alone, they are able to sort through high application volumes because they are reputed programs in ultra-popular locations; they use GMAT averages to boost their rankings and weed out candidates; they use demonstrated applicant interest to ration the admits they give out and ensure that they’re giving spots to students who truly want to come.

Fine schools, but these strategies don’t really make for a Top 5 reputation, contrary to what some of you are saying. And based on the employment reports, it sounds like recruiters (who are the other half of the customer base) don’t think so either. Remember, year-after-year corporate recruiters view business schools as big-volume headhunters; schools are recognized for their ability to filter out the kind of talent that corporations want, but don’t feel like seeking out on their own. Based on who they hire, it looks like there are more than 5 programs that do a better job at enroling the kind of candidates that corporations want to hire.

Thanks to stats released by P&Q the yield % may also be affected by the % of students receiving scholarships. For instance at Ross, 75% receive scholarships- therefore the high yield above. Therefore, I think this is also a very important factor into the equation of yield %.

justwondering, I think you raise a good point regarding why so much attention on Stern. Speaking for myself only, I addressed Stern a number of times because several posters were quite upset about its placement at #15, and I am interested in that hard to define line between a school’s ranking/reputation and actual admissions selectivity-as they can be quite variable. I kept referencing Stern in my comments because of the interest displayed in these/those comments. Incidentally, I do believe that BW and Forbes under-ranked Stern by putting it at #18 in each of their respective rankings but that is neither here nor there…You make a very valid point about brand, reputation, and network, which can be very much at odds with admissions rates, Noble Prize Winners, yields etc…

Hi, I wondered what the rationale is for the weighting of the ranks:

“BusinessWeek, U.S. News and Forbes each have a weight of 25%. The FT is at 15% and The Economist is at 10%.”

The FT’s ranking is extremely well regarded internationally, even more so than the US-centric publications. Any reason it wasn’t given equal billing given the importance of international business?

On a related topic, do any of the rankings take into account percent of students from International locations? I wonder how international students may skew the post-graduate salaries.

Ditto with percentage of students taking non-profit, government, or socially conscious career paths. Have you considered adding in the Aspen Institute’s Beyond Grey Pinstripes rankings?

This should be obvious, this is a great effort but I disagree with your analysis. Haas is a good try but still makes it top 10 @ #9. NYU is a top 10 defacto. They got a 90k alumni (network) base worldwide, great placement and reputation. If they worked so immensely hard on their yield why then its only 50+% and not 60-70%? This is a bit stretched I think and therefore that’s why it has reasonably created so much discussion and attention.

Hi, just a quick question. What methodology are you using to create the index? I don’t understand how Wisconsin can be ranked #24 when the inputs are 30, 34, 29, 28, 31 and 27. Unlike its neighbors in your ranking (e.g., Georgetown, Vanderbilt, etc.) Wisconsin doesn’t have even one number that could pull its average up to explain its ranking.

Thanks for shedding light on this.

{moderator: errors fixed below}

I came here from a brag piece at UW’s website: It diminishes cred that its position at 24th is higher than any of its input rankings. I see how that may have happened but it also weakens the surface validity of the entire list, should anyone look down that far

@Rebecca “The FT’s ranking is extremely well regarded internationally”

I’m from a Western European country. Here FT is almost the only ranking people know about. The reason is because FT uses to rank very well European schools (and particularly the schools from my country) and because of that the ranking appears in the national newspapers every time it ranks well one of our schools. However, BW, US News, Forbes rankings didn’t use to rank international schools, or when they do, they don’t put very well our schools. Therefore, they never appear in any media here.

In my view FT is a ranking totally flawed and many people out of the US are mislead about what schools are the best because of this crappy ranking.

John, on your point of desirable location, I thought it interesting if you go through the top 25 you have schools in major cities like Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Austin, and Nashville placing on the mid to lower end of the scale. One can argue that Goizueta, CMU, McComb, and Owen churn out students that are equal to some of their counterparts and have the program/infrastructure to rival as well. But that yield (excluding scholarship effect) is really just driven by the desirability of where the school is. Who the heck wants to live in Pittsburgh? Atlanta? Yikes.

Another point is the size of some of these schools. The rankings may not fully account (but includes implicitly through recruiter ranks, for example) for how size varies dramatically across the schools. If you believe business school is about partying, networking and learning, then it’ll make absolute sense that 900 person class Harvard is #1. But if you are more interested in intimate (100-200 per class) but high level environments to maximize learning of fundamentals (with some partying/networking thrown in), then schools like Goizueta, McDonough, and Kelley are better fits.

John,

When do you expect to release the top 50 non-US MBA programs and do you plan on making a composite US/non-US ranking?

John,

Great information as usual…very much appreciated! Any new updates on timing for the new P&Q EMBA Rankings?
Thanks Again!

when will the 2012 ranking be declared

tks. Booth is ranked 3rd as per your rating and if you take an average of all rankings it is 2nd……then why is wharton perceived above booth..

Many Thanks

Does anyone know when BW will publish its 2012 MBA rankings?

Hi,

This might not be the place for this, but I was hoping to hear what Poets and Quants thought of the Tufts Fletcher School’s Master of International Business program. If anyone else can weigh in I’d really appreciate it too. Thanks.

Gosh,

I’m not quite sure what you’re advocating, as it seems you hate rankings but love the “prestige factor” that influences applications. To defend Booth a bit, regardless of their yield or application stats, they are clearly among the best in the game at shaping well balanced and extremely capable graduates. To a large extent, the same cannot be said for Wharton these days. Many of their recent grads that I have encountered have tried to let Wharton’s brand speak on their behalf (i.e. they couldn’t contribute much to the team, but they were also the one’s tossing out their school’s name three times a day.) With graduates like this burning their way through companies, it is only a matter of time before perceptions of a school start to change.
Unfortunately for both Booth and Wharton, the “prestige factor” is a lagging indicator. The impact on Booth is clear, as it keeps them from being able to hold an undisputed top-3 spot for many, many years. However, the impact on Wharton is actually worse in practical terms. Top-tier business school candidates are likely going to be aware of the most recent trends with Wharton, and they are not likely to want to associate themselves with a school that is past its prime. This leaves Wharton with a less-qualified pool of applicants that are attracted primarily to the legacy brand, resulting in a future graduating class that is less likely to perform like a traditional Wharton grad and more likely to talk about being a Wharton grad. This is a vicious cycle where the prestige once associated with Wharton is cheapened by the ever increasing number of graduates who place undue emphasis on where they went to school rather than what they can do.

@D

I don’t really understand why you talk about Wharton here? My question was about Booth, not Wharton, I was wondering why Booth would be number 3 with such poor statistics? In my view it is illogical. But if you ask my opinion, then Wharton and Booth are not in the same category, as I see Booth as on par with CBS/Kellogg/MIT but not HBS/Stanford/Wharton.

In any case, I don’t see why Wharton would have passed its prime? Do you mean because of some rankings alone? You are right, I don’t really respect rankings because they are pointless: any credible ranking should have HBS number one because what people look for is the brand, first and foremost. But none of them has HBS number one! Is it credible? No. So do you really think that if the BW ranking was ranking HBS number 10 people would not go there anymore? No, they would laugh at it and continue applying to HBS. So why should we trust them when they say Booth is number one? It is not credible at all to even pretend Booth is better than HBS/Stanford and nobody believes it. Look at the yield!

On the other hand, if I may I think you care too much about rankings: the mere fact that Booth is number 1 of the BW ranking will not by itself make it top3, sorry. Kellogg was number 1 for years but it is still behind HBS/Stanford/Wharton because prestige is something different than % of women students, GMAT or happiness of alumnis.

Best