Linkedin’s Goofy B-School Ranking

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Linkedin’s Goofy Business School Ranking

What do you get when you data mine the best companies in specific sectors, cross reference them against professional profiles, and segment them by school?

That’s right…another business school ranking.

Last October, Linkedin leaped into the rankings foray, with its “University Rankings,” using the tagline “Based on career outcomes.” Tapping its nearly 350 million professional profiles, Linkedin has created rankings for both graduate and undergraduate programs that can broken out by the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In addition, Linkedin separates its rankings by discipline, including finance, investment banking, management consulting, marketing, sales, and accounting.

DESIRABLE JOBS IN DESIRABLE COMPANIES

So how does it work? Well, let’s just say that’s where the methodology gets a bit fuzzy. First, Linkedin seeks out “desirable jobs” in a particular industry. These stem from companies deemed desirable for finance professionals. And what makes a company desirable? Here is how Linkedin describes desirability:

“For example, we define desirable finance jobs as finance jobs at companies desirable for finance professionals. “… imagine there are two companies, A and B. If more finance professionals are choosing to leave company A to work at company B, the data indicates that getting a finance job at B is more desirable. This is based on the hypothesis that when a professional moves from one company to another, she gives the company she moves to a strong vote of confidence.”

That said, Linkedin also factors retention into its formula. “…the ability of a company to retain its employees is a strong indicator of that employer’s attractiveness. So, hypothetically, if A and B are both attracting external employees at similar rates, but A has a much larger employee turnover than B, the data would show B to be a more desirable employer.”

From there, Linkedin targets those graduates who work in particular careers at these companies. To keep the rankings current, the site only tabulates those profiles where users graduated within the past eight years. Then, it is simply a matter of separating profiles out by school and then dividing them by degree (graduate or undergraduate) and segment (investment banking, sales, etc.). To rank schools, Linkedin takes the percentages of alumni in particular jobs from various schools and stacks them against each other.

A VALUABLE TOOL WITH A FLAWED METHODOLOGY

Mind you, the methodology has flaws. It inevitably discounts startups. And it penalizes programs with a broad range of offerings. Linkedin also treats all roles (a vice president or specialist, for example) as equals. The same is true of companies (Would you rather work for Goldman Sachs or Raymond James?). Not to mention, the ranking doesn’t include salaries (the truest “outcome” there is).

If you treat this ranking as another puzzle piece – and don’t get too hung up on the metrics – it can be informative.  For example, you can use the rankings to pick out graduate programs with a heavy emphasis on the function you want to study. Then, just use Linkedin’s alumni tool to find where nearby alumni live, work, and do to build your network.

STERN DOMINATES INVESTMENT BANKING AS HARVARD TOPS MANAGEMENT CONSULTING

So how does this ranking compare to U.S. News (which ranks off a shorter window than Linkedin’s eight years)? Let’s start with finance, where Wharton, Booth, and Stern top U.S. News’ 2016 rankings. According to Linkedin, Stern has the highest percentage of students from its graduate program in “desirable jobs” with “desirable companies.” Stern was followed by Cornell Johnson and Virginia Darden. In fact, Wharton and Booth – both dubbed “finance schools” by the press – ranked 10th and 17th respectively in this area – behind programs like Emory (Goizueta) and Wake Forest that aren’t even ranked in U.S. News’ top 25  finance MBA programs.  Then again, Linkedin’s formula includes all graduate degrees, not just full-time MBAs.

Unlike U.S. News, Linkedin also provides rankings for investment banking and management consulting. Not surprisingly, a New York school – Stern – ranks number one here. That should be no surprise to Poets&Quants readers. Before Linkedin released its rankings, Poets&Quants used Linkedin data to identify where graduates from the top 25 MBA programs worked in finance. Not surprisingly, Stern grads were represented more than other schools at Goldman Sachs, Citi, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Credit Suisse, and Deutsche Bank. This can be attributed to both Stern’s sizable part-time program and its close proximity to the financial district.

However, you’re bound to shake your head upon learning that Yale and Georgetown rank second and third.  For example, these schools combined, had 403 MBAs at Goldman Sachs, Citi, Morgan Stanley, and J.P. Morgan according to Poets&Quants’ 2014 Linkedin audit. Compare that to NYU, which has 2,221 MBAs at these firms. In fact, fourth-ranked Columbia has 1,091 MBAs at these four firms, over two-and-a-half times the number of Yale and Georgetown. And how Wharton came in ninth in Linkedin’s investment banking rankings is another mystery for another day.

Linkedin’s management consulting ranking was more mainstream. As you’d expect, Harvard Business School topped the list. Again, that outcome was confirmed by Poets&Quants in early 2014 with its “Where the Top 25 MBAs Work in Consulting” research. Using Linkedin data, P&Q found that Harvard dominated the ranks at McKinsey, Bain, and BCG. However, the runner-up in Linkedin’s ranking, MIT Sloan, is sure to raise eyebrows. Sloan was only the sixth largest supplier of talent to McKinsey – and ranked seventh with Bain and BCG. Worse, it finished 20th with Deloitte, 23rd with PwC, 13th with Accenture and 11th with Strategy& in terms of the number of alumni working there.

Kellogg, Wharton, and Ross rounded out the top five in consulting, with Kellogg having the largest network among business schools at Accenture and Ross dominating the ranks at A.T. Kearney. Despite having the most alumni in the ranks of Deloitte and PwC, the University of Texas (McCombs) ranked only 18th in Linkedin’s management consulting rankings.

And don’t assume Kellogg is just a marketing school (even if U.S. News has ranked them number one for eons). With Linkedin, Kellogg only ranks seventh among graduate programs. The top program? That would Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. They were followed by Ross, Kenan-Flagler, Wharton, and Goizueta. The biggest exclusion? Look no further than Stanford, whose marketing program is ranked third by U.S. News, but its alumni don’t even crack the top 25 in Linkedin.

To see the top programs for accounting, sales, finance, investment banking, management consulting, marketing, and software development at startups, go to the next page.

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Source: Linkedin

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AVERAGE BUSINESS SCHOOL COSTS APPROACH $200K

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BLAST FROM THE PAST AND VIDEO OF THE WEEK

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