Recruiter Rankings: U.S. News vs. BW

In addition, neither methodology specified exactly what to evaluate. As a result, recruiters could use different criteria to measure programs based on their personal preferences. In other words, each ranking could be tainted by subjective opinions and inconsistent standards. That’s particularly damning with Bloomberg Businessweek, where a small response rate accounted for nearly half of a school’s ranking.

Before 2014, recruiters responding to Bloomberg Businessweek would simply rank 20 schools from first to worst (with 50 percent of the weight coming from the current year and 25 percent each from two and four years ago). In overhauling their methodology, they adopted one of U.S. News’ fatal flaws: Including multiple responses from the same employer. Bloomberg Businessweek argues that this change reflects the “less centralized” nature of MBA recruiting. But it also concentrates more influence in fewer organizations. That said, Bloomberg Businessweek did remove scores where alumni evaluated their own schools, a difference from U.S. News.

To see how your favorite schools fare, check out our tables featured past and present recruiter rankings from Bloomberg Businessweek and U.S. News.

Recruiter Rankings & How They Compare (1-25)

Institution	U.S. News 2015 Overall Rank	Bloomberg Business-week 2014 Overall Rank	2015 U.S. News Recruiter Assess-ment Rank	2014 Bloomberg Businessweek Employer Survey Rank	2014 U.S. News Recruiter Assessment Rank	2012 Bloomberg Businessweek Employer Survey Rank
Penn (Wharton)	1	2	1	1	1	2
Duke (Fuqua)	14	1	10	2	10	7
Chicago (Booth)	4	3	5	3	4	1
Stanford	1	4	1	4	1	5
Northwestern (Kellogg)	6	7	5	5	4	4
Columbia	8	5	7	6	7	8
Harvard	1	8	1	7	3	3
Yale	13	6	7	8	8	27
Carnegie Melon (Tepper)	18	10	20	9	20	17
Michigan (Ross)	11	9	12	10	12	6
Virginia (Darden)	11	20	12	11	12	9
MIT (Sloan)	5	14	4	12	4	10
North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler)	19	12	20	13	16	14
Dartmouth (Tuck)	9	15	12	14	10	11
NYU (Stern)	10	22	12	15	12	16
UCLA	16	11	18	16	16	19
Emory (Goizueta)	20	18	24	17	22	23
Indiana (Kelley)	21	16	18	18	10	20
Buffalo SUNY	74	39	22	19	25	45
Texas-Austin (McCombs)	15	23	10	20	16	15
Cincinnati (Lindner)	60	47	31	21	59	NA
Cornell (Johnson)	17	13	12	22	12	12
California-Irvine (Merage)	45	31	41	23	97	50
Vanderbilt (Owen)	25	30	31	24	29	31
Wake Forest	58	46	41	25	50	40

Sources: Bloomberg Businessweek and U.S. News and World Report

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