A School Debuts A ‘DIY’ MBA Ranking

Metrics 2

What’s more, users can click on the “School Data” tab below the ranking to get school-specific data in several key categories. Here is an example:

#3: MIT Sloan

Average Salary and Bonus: $142,936

Employed at 3 Months: 92.8%

Program Enrollment: 812

Average Tuition and Fees: $63,454

Average Debt: $100,512

With each school’s data on the same page, potential applicants can effortlessly compare schools in the categories above. For example, Booth and Wharton are right alongside each other in the previous. Thus, users can quickly notice tradeoffs, such as Booth MBAs making nearly $5,000 less than Wharton grads to start – but also paying $900 less per year in tuition and fees.

DESIGNED BY STUDENTS FOR STUDENTS

It’s a nifty little tool – one that required over six months to develop after Dean Jiambalvo signed off on it last August. For Poston and Bowers, the first order of business was determining which data should be included. To narrow it down that, Foster leaned heavily on the best source imaginable: The students themselves.  “They told us it had to be simple to use,” Poston notes. “They couldn’t spend 10 or 20 minutes figuring out how to make it work. They wanted to highlight certain drivers that had [the most] relevance to candidates.”

In fact, Foster students were consulted throughout the development process, Bowers details. “We made quite a few improvements based on their feedback, such as the slider system so it could be better viewed on mobile and tablets. They also talked about how time-consuming the research process was, needing to go to multiple sites and just figuring out the key performance metrics for each school. So we created a dashboard at the bottom that showed the key analytics that were important to them.”

Even more, Poston adds, the students helped with picking the right terminology, citing U.S. News’ “Peer Reputation” – a survey completed by deans and directors that rates the quality of other programs – as an example. “[Students] thought it was what their friends think,” Poston explains, “so we had to change the names of some things” (which was replacing “Peer Reputation” with “Dean and Director Opinion” in this case).

LIMITED TO 30 AMERICAN SCHOOLS

Andrea Bowers

Andrea Bowers

In developing the MBA Rankings Calculator, Foster overcame other hurdles. For one, they had to limit the number of schools to 30, given the wild data fluctuations between schools after that point. The calculator also omits international programs – a deliberate decision designed to make the school comparisons more consistent. “We’re trying to align with our competitor schools as the driver of this and the metrics change when you go into the international schools,” Poston explains. “They’re much smaller programs – It’s just a different area.”

Such exclusions also supported a lean methodology focused on getting something up now and tinkering with it later. “We wanted to keep it very simple in the beginning,” Bowers states, adding that the metrics came predominately from publications like U.S. News & World Report that students often consult first.

To add credibility to the calculator, Foster also signed licensing agreements with the data sources. “That gave us the confidence that [users] would know it is a credible tool from credible sources and also that we had permission to use it,” Bowers adds. Overall, however, it was an internally-developed project start-to-finish, though the school did contract with a part-time developer to handle the database integration and make the calculator mobile compatible.

Besides the downside that it only focuses on 30 U.S. schools and is therefore entirely U.S. centric, the tool is also loaded, by necessity, with somewhat out-of-date data. The U.S. News stats, for example, are essentially 18 months old, even though the magazine’s new ranking with refreshed data will come out in just another week. Still, this new release reflects admissions and employment data last fall. But that’s one drawback facing any tool leveraging constantly changing information.

GENERATING TRAFFIC WORLDWIDE

Ten days after the launch, the calculator has already done what it was intended to do: Drive potential students to the Foster site and start a conversation.

“We’ve been seeing traffic from all over the world, from New York, Sidney Australia, Bengalaru, India, and Shanghai, Bowers raves. “Several of the MBA candidate sites have spontaneously posted threads about it and we ‘re also seeing lots of sharing on Linkedin and other social media.”

Of course, the site has limitations. For one, it doesn’t factor in academic concentrations, let alone salaries in those areas. Even more, some information, such as data from U.S. News, is already 18 months old – with fresh data already being released next week as part of its 2017 rankings. However, the calculator is still in its early stages, with Poston still wrestling with many options and opportunities intrinsic to it.

“At this point, we didn’t know what will happen,” Poston admits. “We put it out there and said, let’s see what happens, what kind of interest and feedback do we get and should we expand it into other variables and take it farther. We want to know what kinds of things interest people. We’re kind of in a wait-and-see mode to see what we want to do more.”

However, he recognizes one benefit offered by the calculator that will keep applicants visiting the site.

“We know [potential students] are  going to look at where is the school located, what kinds of companies recruit here, how big is the program, culture of the school – all of those factors,” Poston adds. “If you simplify one of the considerations they have – rankings – they have more time to consider all of the other individual factors that they are going to weigh in the process.”

To try the calculator out for yourself, click here.

DON’T MISS: MEET FOSTER’S CLASS OF 2017 MBAs

RANKING THE 2015 B-SCHOOL RANKINGS

Questions about this article? Email us or leave a comment below.