B-Schools With The Most Competitive Students

It’s also somewhat surprising that Columbia Business School wasn’t on the list. In years past, some overzealous Columbia students were said to hide books in the library so their classmates wouldn’t be able to study for an upcoming exam. Typically, schools located in big cities tend to bring out the most competitive instincts in students, partly because they can disappear in the city during their two-year experience and often feel less connected to the university and their classmates.

When BusinessWeek began surveying MBA students in 1988, it asked a telling question: “What percentage of your classmates would you have liked to have as friends?” The schools that scored highest on what you might call a “friendliness index” were Yale, Dartmouth, North Carolina, Northwestern and Stanford. And which schools were on the low end? Columbia, Chicago, NYU, and Wharton, the Princeton Review’s number one school with the most competitive students.

BUSINESS SCHOOLS WITH THE ‘MOST COMPETITIVE’ STUDENTS

How to read the table: For each year of the Princeton Review survey, we give the actual rank for each school that made the top ten list for having the “most competitive” students. The overall results are based on an index that takes into account each school’s annual rankings as well as the number of times a school made the Princeton Review top ten list.

School Indez 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008
1. Pennsylvania (Wharton) 100.0 1 2 1 1 3
2. Vanderbilt (Owen) 95.9 5 1 2 2 2
3. Brigham Young (Marriott) 88.7 7 4 3 4 1
4. Acton School of Business 74.2 2 3 4 3
5. Texas A&M (Mays) 59.8 6 6 5 9
6. Southern Methodist (Cox) 55.7 5 6 8
7. Arkansas (Walton) 49.5 10 9 7 10
8. University of Mississippi 42.3 8 9 5
9. Purdue (Krannert) 32.0 4 7
10. Rochester (Simon) 30.9 8 4
11. Rutgers University 26.8 6 10
12. Howard University 24.7 9 9
13. IMD 18.6 3
13. Santa Clara University (Leavey) 18.6 8
15. Texas Southern (Jones) 16.5 5
16. University of Iowa (Tippie) 15.5 6
17. University of Miami 14.4 7
17. Clemson University 14.4 7
19. Georgia State (Robinson) 13.4 8
20. Texas Christian (Neeley) 11.3 10
20. Florida State 11.3 10

Source: The Princeton Review

Methodology: To create the index and our own ranking, we awarded each school 10 points for every first place finish in this ranking, nine points for every second place finish, and so on. We also awarded ten points for each year a school landed on the top ten list on the theory that multiple appearances gives more credibility to the Princeton Review’s findings.

 

 

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