How Recruiters Rank Business Schools

Temple University’s Fox School of Business in Philadelphia

RICE AND TEMPLE AMONG THE MBA PROGRAMS TO WATCH

In a broader context, recruiters have been increasingly pleased with MBA programs. Just backtrack to the 2014 ranking. Why then? The 2018 ranking is equal parts recruiter scores from 2018, 2017, and 2016. In other words, the 2014 scores are a reboot, untainted by residual data from the past three years. In the 2014 survey, not one school finished with a recruiter score lower than the year before — a far cry from the seven schools that scored lower in 2018. Don’t look for business schools to get too sentimental about the past. Among this year’s Top 20 programs, 14 notched higher recruiter scores than they did in 2014 (with another 2 programs maintaining the same score). Expanding that out to the Top 50, 36 programs held higher averages than 2014 (with 5 schools showing no change).

Over these four years, several programs made impressive moves with employers too. Rice Jones, for example, saw its scores jump from 2.9 to 3.6, with Georgetown nearly matching the feat by going from 3.3 to 3.9. Temple Fox, whose most recent incoming class consisted of just 40 members, has obviously made a big impression with recruiters, with scores vaulting from 2.1 to 3.7. More modestly, Dartmouth Tuck, Yale SOM, Berkeley Haas, Texas McCombs, UCLA Anderson, and Carnegie Mellon Tepper have enjoyed a 0.2 point upswing, while Duke Fuqua, Emory Goizueta, and Washington Olin improved their marks by 0.3 since 2014.

This trend becomes more hazy when U.S. News recruiter scoring is stretched back to 2006 (the last survey where P&Q has records). Over these 13 years, eight Top 20 programs have boosted their recruiter scores, headed by the University of Texas-Dallas (+1.1) and Yale SOM (+0.3). By the same token, Harvard, Stanford, Kellogg, and even Wharton have seen their scores dip, with Virginia Darden taking the hardest fall among Top 20 programs with a 0.3 of a point decrease.

GO TO NEXT PAGE TO SEE HISTORICAL RECRUITER RANKINGS FROM BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK