Ranking The 2016 Business School Rankings

6) Booth Tops Economist Ranking For 5th Straight Year: What can you say about The Economist ranking? It is comprehensive — you have to give it that. It’s also mercurial, to use a polite term. For applicants weary of MBA rankings where the top 20 rarely switch seats, The Economist will be a refreshing change. For those still bewildered by how Wharton and INSEAD could rank just 12th and 13th in the world, the ranking is bound to spark a shortness of breath at best or an aneurism at worst.

How fickle is The Economist ranking? In 2016, 28 of 100 programs surfed through a double-digit ranking change. Three years ago, Kellogg ranked 23rd in the world. Today, it is regarded as the second-best program according to Economist logic. What gives?

The Economist gives weight, in one form or another, to 21 different metrics. Individually, these metrics are actually far more informative and credible than those throw-ins found in The Financial Times. Some 35% of the weight goes to career metrics, including placement and recruiter diversity (with the effectiveness of career services granted the most influence). Educational experience consumes another 35%. What is this you ask? Think faculty quality (student survey, faculty-to-student ratio and Ph.D. attainment); student quality (GMAT scores, work experience, and salaries before B-school); diversity (survey score of classmates, gender, nationalities); and overall education (rating of electives and facilities along with the number of languages and overseas travel). Post-graduation salary and growth takes up another 20% of the weight, with networking (overseas chapters, student rating of alumni network, etc.) grabbing the last 10%.

Despite this reasonable setup, the rankings somehow degenerate into a dumpster fire. How else can you explain how a bedrock European program like ESADE cratered from 21st to 54th in one year? Then again, that theater of the absurd pales in comparison to the absurdity of 10th-ranked University of Queensland, which (if you believe the data) has both the highest salaries and highest caliber students. Bottom line: There are no sturdy guard rails to hold the ranking together. Instead, it consists of a series of data slivers that, in practice, thump like bumper cars, leaving skewed clumps of data in their wake. Another theory: The wild fluctuations could also originate from smaller sample sizes. Unlike Bloomberg Businessweek, The Economist doesn’t release the number of responses it gleans from student surveys, relying instead on the Orwellian-sounding “minimum threshold of data.”

That said, Booth has somehow managed to float above this fray, ranking 1st from 2012-2016. Notably, Booth MBA candidates gave their school the highest rating in personal development and educational experience, with the school’s high placement rate and student assessment of career services chipping in on Booth’s victory. Surprisingly, American programs dominate The Economist’s top 20 programs, holding the top seven spots and 14 out of the first 20. This is no doubt helped along by starting salary, which, as a standalone, represents the heaviest weight at 15%.

All-in-all, The Economist ranking collapses under its own weight. Pick apart the data and you’ll open a wealth of information that can tip viewers off to unexpected strengths — or simmering discontent. Luckily, The Economist itself is aware of its shortcomings, noting in its methodology that the “results of rankings can be volatile, so they should be treated with caution.” MBA applicants would be wise to heed their warning.

7) Washington University Is Head of The Class In P&Q‘s Inaugural Undergrad B-School Ranking: Not really an MBA ranking? You’re right. So why is it here? For one, it is a major step forward in school rankings in general. With U.S. News now being the only outlet to compile an undergraduate business school ranking — a popularity contest based on a poll of deans and faculty — P&Q decided to take matters into its own hands. And we did it with a twist: collaborating with business school deans themselves to help formulate the methodology itself.

It wasn’t an easy process to coalesce some very disparate views, sometimes with agendas behind them. In the end, the deans’ insights enabled P&Q to devise a balanced system for measuring excellence. It is based on three components. Each is worth a third of the weight: Admissions Standards (i.e. SAT scores, percentage of students in the top 10% of their high school class, and school acceptance rate); Academic Excellence (derived from a 12-question alumni survey and the availability of a “signature experience or a global immersion”); and Employment Outcomes (including an internship before senior year, average starting pay and bonus, and employment rate).

Fair? We think so. Overall, the Olin Business School at Washington University of St. Louis came up the big winner, thanks to top three finishes in admissions and academic experience. Olin was followed by Notre Dame Mendoza, Wharton, Georgetown McDonough, and U.C.-Berkeley Haas. Haas and Wharton racked up top honors for the most rigorous admissions. Two Hoosier schools, Mendoza and Indiana Kelley, delivered the best academic experience. When it comes to employment metrics, the top six programs were found on the east coast, led by Wharton and New York University Stern.

A takeaway for MBAs: Some 14 of the top 15 undergraduate business schools could also be found among P&Q’s top 30 MBA programs. That’s no accident. The undergraduate and graduate programs share, to a great extent, the same professors, facilities, resources, and intellectual culture. In other words, if the template is sound at the undergraduate level, there is a good chance that it carries over to the graduate one.

8) The MBA Programs Employers Love: Who’s the real business school customer? On its face, the answer is undoubtedly the students. However, there is another actor with some pull: Employers.

Unless you’re looking to create your own job, you’ll have to play by someone else’s rules. That’s no different than business school administrators. Venture too far out of the mainstream or lower your standards and employers will cast their vote by focusing somewhere else. That’s not to say schools cater to recruiters and jump at their beckon call. However, they are partners — and their word carries weight with every constituency at the schools.

Each year, U.S. News and Bloomberg Businessweek query recruiters from top firms to score the schools where they have a presence. The surveys have their flaws. U.S. News rates on a simplistic five point scale, for example. And while Bloomberg Businessweek breaks scores down by industry and skill set, their lax standards often result in multiple responses coming from alumni of the programs they rate and from the same company.

Still, when you place the rankings side-by-side, some patterns emerge. Namely, recruiters are particularly drawn to Chicago Booth and Northwestern Kellogg, with the programs ranking in the top two in both surveys (which undoubtedly have some overlap in respondents). Harvard and MIT Sloan also rank in the top five in both surveys. In fact, the surveys are relatively consistent near the top, though U.S. News recruiters are far more smitten with the University of Texas-Dallas Jindal, University of Texas McCombs, and Dartmouth Tuck than Bloomberg Businessweek respondents are.

Regardless, these rankings are a window into how recruiters view certain schools…and ultimately you. Sure, the big companies will hire from every top school. Question is, does your program have enough cache for you to get the benefit of the doubt?

Next Page: Applicant Yield and 40 Additional B-School Rankings.