Top 10 BusinessWeek Ranking Comments

Screenshot of BusinessWeek's rankings coverage. Pay no attention to the misspelling of "Berkeley."

Screenshot of BusinessWeek‘s rankings coverage. Pay no attention to the misspelling of “Berkeley.”

While the volatility in the results of BusinessWeek‘s 2014 MBA program rankings raises doubts about the value the list has for students struggling to choose among business schools, one thing is certain: there’s entertainment value in the comments attached to the publication’s rankings coverage.

Some might consider the BusinessWeek rankings themselves laughable. At least 20 of the 85 ranked MBA programs in the U.S. experienced double-digit increases or decreases. The U.C. Berkeley Haas School of Business has the second most selective MBA program in the U.S., but was relegated to 19th, far below the 11th-ranked UCLA Anderson School of Management. The University of Virginia Darden School of Business plummeted 10 spots to 20th. Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business took first place, its first top five finish in 14 years, despite ranking 22nd for student satisfaction.

But those results are more odd-funny than funny-funny. To truly appreciate the rankings results, it helps to check out the chatter, which as everyone knows on the Internet, can be alternately hilarious, unfair, ridiculous, even sick.

Give someone a chance to weigh in when he or she is completely anonymous and their worst instincts can take over. But there is no denying the entertainment value in all of this. To that end, as a service to our readers, Poets&Quants has built a spinoff ranking: The Top 10 Comments on BusinessWeek Rankings. Without further ado, and with apologies to David Letterman, here they are:

10. “Show of hands of people who would give up admission into Wharton, Booth, Stanford GSB, Columbia, Yale, Kellogg, or HBS to go to Fuqua! Anyone? Anyone? Crickets?”

9. “This debate is as old as rankings themselves but this list is the hardest to swallow yet.”

HUMPTY DUMPTY STEALS A WIFE

8. “After paying a lot of money for grad school, you get a starting position within an investment banking or a management consulting firm where you work your socks off until you are burned out. Then you go up the ranks, go through a divorce, and have children that goes to good schools just like you. Only, they don’t see you because you are still working your socks off. Every year you go back to measure d***s with your alumni to see who’s been most successful. Then when your ambition has left, you seek a smaller firm where you get better working hours. You get time to reflect over your life and start playing golf.Your second wife, which by the way is much younger than you, travels off for tennis camp down south with humpty dumpty off a tennis coach. You realize that your first wife was actually a nice one, you say farewell to this world and half the people in your funeral can’t show any expressions after their 10th plastic surgery operation. Cheers grad school student for a happy life and enjoy your rankings!

7. “Anyone smart enough to be admitted to a top MBA program should be smart enough to recognize that these rankings, like all the others, are just a racket to sell magazines.”

6. “If you want to know where a person went to bizschool, just wait five seconds and the Harvard person will tell you what school he attended.”

5. “It’s ok to ask the students… But to weigh their opinions at 45%, the same as the employers’? It fails more than the sniff test… I was never crazy about how US News does their rankings, but this makes them look like geniuses.”

YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN AN IDIOT

4. “If you want to believe that Fuqua really and truly deserves to be ranked highest out of and over any and all of the essentially-similar-in-quality schools that compose the top ten/twenty/thirty, then by all means believe it. And I’ll believe you’re an idiot for doing so.”

3. “This ranking is Fuq-ed!”

2. “And Bloomberg stays irrelevant. Yay Bloomberg. I’m envisioning the talks after commencement at Indiana and Maryland????? (ranked No. 2 and No. 1 respectively for student satisfaction) Hey after you leave take the survey and give us 100% on everything thanks….. what a joke.”

1. “Looked at my calendar, had to make sure it wasn’t April Fool’s day.”

As a special bonus, and in an unprecedented break from Poets&Quants‘ long-standing policy of never giving voice to internet trolls, we’ll present a No. 11, possibly the most apropos comment of the lot:

“PULL MY PEEEPEEEEEEEEE……….PULL MY PEEPEE………. HEHEHEHEHEHE PULL ME PEEEPEEEEEEE………”

Enough said.

DON’T MISS: DUKE TOPS 2014 BUSINESSWEEK MBA RANKING or THE BIG WINNERS & LOSERS IN BUSINESSWEEK’S 2014 RANKING