Duke Tops 2014 Businessweek Ranking

Tepper’s recruiter rank rose to 9th, up eight spots from 17th in 2012 and 11 places from 20th in 2010. Only one other time was Tepper as high as ninth in Businessweek’s employer survey and that was back in 1992. In 13 previous surveys of recruiters, the school averaged a rank of 16th place among MBA employers.

A change in the way Businessweek calculated its student survey scores also greatly diminished the impact of those surveys on the final results. No school in the history of the ranking since it was launched in 1988 has ever won first place while scoring so low as Duke in student satisfaction in 22nd place. This year, however, the magazine counted the answers to every question asked of students, rather than the questions that showed significant variation. It made the school-to-school differences on the student survey far less meaningful because those results are so closely bunched together.

That’s why Duke’s student survey score failed to hold back the school. How unusual was Duke’s No. 2 recruiter ranking? Very. During the 13 previous times that Businessweek surveyed corporate recruiters–in the past doing upfront diligence to insure that only a senior level human resources official in charge of MBA recruiting for a company filled out the survey–Duke never did better than seventh place and was 14th twice. Over that timeframe, the school’s natural employer rank was slightly higher than tenth place–a long way from its No. 2 showing this year after the changes in methodology.

BUSINESSWEEK CLAIMS HARVARD HAS A PROBLEM WITH DIVERSITY

Still, the student satisfaction portion of the ranking yielded some fascinating insights. Businessweek said that HBS scored lowest among the top 10 business schools on its atmosphere for women and racial and religious minorities. “Diversity to HBS means playing around with grades and other measures of success until the numbers look right, rather than tackling the underlying issues,” one student wrote on the survey filled out for Businessweek. And when asked to rate the “climate for people of all socioeconomic backgrounds,” HBS students ranked their school second to last out of 112 schools on the list. “There is a disparity of incomes among the students, which can cause pressure on those students who do not come from wealth to be able to participate in the extracurricular events,” another student complained.

Meantime, Chicago’s reversal of fortune—aided by Businessweek’s changes—has occurred just as Yale’s School of Management has managed a complete turnaround. It’s hard not to note that the person responsible for Chicago’s ascendance, Dean Ted Snyder, has been busy reinventing Yale’s business school in the past few years. Since Snyder’s arrival in New Haven, CT., Yale has gone from 37th place in Businessweek’s employer survey to eighth, and from 18 in the magazine’s student survey to seventh. Meantime, Chicago has made the opposite trip, falling to third in the employer survey from first, and to 15th in the student survey from second. The result: Chicago, once first, is now third overall in this year’s ranking. Yale, ranked 21st overall, is now sixth.

2014 Bloomberg Businessweek MBA Ranking

The biggest winner in this year’s Bloomberg Businessweek ranking is Yale University, which cracked the elite top of the list for the first time. Yale’s School of Management made the most significant gains of any top 25 school, jumping 15 places to finish sixth best, just behind Columbia Business School, which jumped an impressive eight places to gain its fifth place finish. Rice University’s business school also did exceptionally well, rising nine spots to claim a rank of 25th, while two L.A. schools–UCLA’s Anderson and the University of Southern California’s Marshall School–both improved by seven places each to rank 11th and 21st, respectively.

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek 2014 MBA ranking