Ranking Business School Reputations by: Jeff Schmitt on May 20, 2014 | | 39,040 Views May 20, 2014 Copy Link Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email Share on LinkedIn Share on WhatsApp Share on Reddit āItās not about aptitude, Ā Itās the way youāre viewed. Ā So itās very shewd to be, Ā Very, very popularā¦like me!ā – Galinda Upland (āWickedā) Sometimes, U.S. Newsā business school rankings seem like a popularity contest. Sure, the index scores awarded to each MBA program integrates empirical data such asĀ starting pay, job placements, GMATs, and GPAs. In the end, the single biggest weight ā 25% ā is given over to āpeer assessments.ā So what exactly are these assessments? Business school deans and MBA program directors assess each other’s programs. Using a five-point scale, where one is marginal and five is outstanding, the deans and directors basically hold the fates of their fellow business schools. PEER ASSESSMENTS ARE PRETTY MUCH A POPULARITY CONTEST You can probably identify the flaws here: Administrators often possess surface knowledge of the academic curriculum, students, support, and initiatives at other schools. While these administrators can opt-out of scoring particular schools, that simply gives greater weight to a smaller swath of responses (only 42% of targets respond to U.S. Newsā survey already). With survey respondents evaluating their competitors, there is always the possibility of mischief. When you factor in recruiter surveys, which account for 15% of the formulaās weight, 40% of U.S. Newsā rankings are based on subjective data. In other words, U.S. Newsā peer assessment score may be less about gauging theĀ overall quality of an MBA experienceĀ and more about measuring a schoolās brand. Think of it this way: Why do football teams get so pumped to play Notre Dame? It isnāt necessarily about the program, which hasnāt won a national championship since the Reagan years. When it comes to the Fighting Irish, teams are playing more than 11 guys on the field. Theyāre duking it out with the lore of Knute Rockne, the Gipper, and Touchdown Jesus. Even in victory, opponents only elevate themselves slightly. In the end, people remember gold helmets, Cotton Bowl comebacks, and the āVictory March.ā Notre Dame football is a brand ā and carries a century worth of associations with it. In the end, that eventually drowns out whatever happens in the present. The same is true of business schools. For most, Harvard, Stanford andĀ WhartonĀ are the gold standard (and deservedly so). And that makes it difficult for other schools to get attention. Take Booth, for example. At the beginning of the decade, Booth was ranked #9 by U.S. News. This year, U.S. News lists it at #4. Whatās more, Booth is placed at #1 by The EconomistĀ and Bloomberg BusinessWeek, #2 by Forbes, and #3 by Poets&Quants. It also boasts a higher employment rate than Harvard and Stanford. In the academic and business communities, Booth enjoys a sterling reputation, no doubt. But ask yourself this: If you asked these same people to list the top three programs, how many would substitute Booth for Wharton? Chances are, the majority would exclude it. And that brings up another question: Is Booth excluded on meritā¦or perception (or what their grads might call a schoolās brand ā and all the popular images that go with it). Earlier this year, Poets&Quants published “When MBA Rankings Lag The Facts,” which applied a formula developed by U.S. News to identify business schools that were āunderperformersā and āoverperformers.ā In other words: Which schoolsā ranking matched their business school reputation among academics? Hereās how it worked: U.S. News ranks schools by their average peer assessment score. From there, they subtracts a schoolās overall rank from its peer assessment rank. A positive number indicates that a school is an āoverperformer,ā while a negative number reflects an āunderperformer.ā Whatās the difference? An overperforming school has a higher overall rank than an academic rank. In the words of Bob Morse, the director of research at U.S. News, āan overperforming school has a āreputation among its academic peers [that] has not kept pace with what it has achieved in the underlying academic indicators.ā Conversely, underperformers have higher academic ranks than overall ranks, which means that its rankings may be artificially inflated by peer assessments. LITTLE YEAR-OVER-YEAR CHANGE IN PEER ASSESSMENTS In other words, underperformers tend to be popular, where their brand and business school reputation may be masking underlying flaws in areas like academic inputs and career outputs. Based on comparing 2014 and 2015 peer assessment scores, one theme is clearly evident: It is very difficult for schools to shake their peersā preconceived notions. In fact, 59 of the top 103 schools received the same peer assessment score as last year (with three schoolsā scores from the previous year being unavailable). Meanwhile, 17 schools gained just a tenth of a point (+0.1), while 18 lost a tenth of a point (-0.1). In other words, only six schools saw more than a slight change in their peer assessment scores: Emory University (Goizueta) (+0.2), George Washington University (-0.2), Thunderbird (-0.5), Claremont (Drucker) (-0.2), the University of Cincinnati (Lindner) (+0.2), and the University of Texas-Dallas (Jindal) (-0.2). This stagnant scoring, coupled with the 25% of the peer assessments, makes it more difficult for some programs, particularly lesser-known ones, to bolster their rankings. Top 20: Booth Punished for Higher Performance Looking for statistical flukes? Look no further than the top 20 schools when it comes to underachievers. Here, theĀ U.S. NewsĀ formula knocks down schools for increasing their overall rankings. So which schools got the proverbial short end of the stick? Check out the accompanying table for the results. (Check out the next page for the Top 20 rankings) Continue ReadingPage 1 of 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Questions about this article? Email us or leave a comment below. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.