Ten Biggest Surprises In Businessweek’s 2023-2024 MBA Ranking

7) Did These Business Schools Rise?

On a few campuses, you’ll hear corks popping in the dean’s offices. Who could blame them? In pressure-packed academic cookers where deans are judged on fund-raising prowess and rankings results, they deserve a few minutes to exhale. After all, graduate pay and placement data are coming out just around the corner. 

Just because some programs moved up doesn’t mean they necessarily improved much. Rankings can be fickle, with thin margins determining winners and losers. Case in point: Just 0.2 of an index point separates #5 Columbia Business School from #2 Chicago Booth. And just 1 point differentiates Chicago Booth from #8 Wharton – which is nearly identical to the margin between #1 Stanford and Chicago Booth. 

In other words, a nominal rise in average pay or lower marks on a few surveys can change a business school’s entire narrative. Pretty humbling huh? That’s why you don’t want to put too much stock in the Bloomberg Businessweek ranking. Rises and falls are rarely as dramatic as you’d imagine, particularly when you examine historical norms and fluctuations. 

Take Dartmouth College’s Tuck School, which crept up two spots to tie 3rd-ranked Virginia Darden. The move was propelled by Tuck’s overall index inching up 1.2 points over the previous year. While Tuck boosted its diversity score by 9.1 points over the past year, it improved by 0.6-to-1.2 points in three dimensions and lost 0.5 of a point in the Learning. At the same time, Tuck had placed 2nd in both the 2021 and 2019 Bloomberg Businessweek rankings. In other words, applicants can conclude Tuck has been a consistent Top 5 program over the past five years. It is an MBA program whose strengths revolve around high starting pay and a tight-knit community that yields highly engaged and supportive alumni. Add to that an Ivy League pedigree set in the rural Northeast that enjoys four seasons and you have a formidable option regardless of ranking. 

Tuck is just one MBA program whose improvement is more smoke and less substance. Columbia Business School – which boasted the 2nd-highest Compensation score – rose from 8th to 5th, with an index that improved by 2.6 points overall. Aside from Diversity – where Columbia experienced a 7.3-point upswing – the school produced nominal improvements in scoring (though a 3.6-point improvement in Compensation certainly merits a pat on the back). Plus, Columbia Business School ranked 1st in this year’s Financial Times ranking, so 5th is almost anticlimactic.  

There are other examples of elite programs whose step forward in 2023 is undercut by steps back in previous years. Last year, UC Berkeley Haas plunged seven spots to 14th. This year, Haas returned to the top 10 – a grouping where it has been a mainstay since 2017. Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School vaulted from 25th to 18th in 2023. Of course, Tepper was ranked 15th in 2019 – and 12th the year before. You could make the same claim about Rice University’s Jones Graduate School. Jones jumped from 29th to 19th this year. You could call it the ‘Rice Revelation’ – except the program was ranked as high as 8th in 2016 before freefalling to as low as 31st. 

Yes, higher rankings make for great publicity and fund-raising – if not bragging rights among graduates who still keep score. Let’s be honest: improvements provide cover for deans to declare their plan is working. Here’s a cold splash of water: The changes don’t last. Improvements are short-term bumps, easily lost, and rarely remembered. So empty the bottle and exhale, upstarts. It’s easier to improve your position than to hold onto it. 

8) Risers Return To Reality

A year ago, we were singing their praises. We dubbed them the ‘next big thing’ and gushed about their momentum. We trumpeted their advantages, momentum, and potential. In our imaginations, we pictured these schools as the new standard-bearers, the upstarts who turn the cutting edge into convention. 

Of course, progress has always been more zig-zag than a straight line. This year, several darlings suddenly found themselves spinning their wheels after years of disrupting the status quo.

Let’s start with USC’s Marshall School. Call it a program with all the advantages: sunny weather, LA digs, gung-ho alumni, and highly-ranked undergraduate and online MBA programs. Heck, their dean even ditched Wharton – Wharton! – to come to University Park. In 2016, it ranked 39th – in the United States! Since then, Marshall has ranked as high as 13th. Now, the program is seemingly languishing – at least as far as Bloomberg Businessweek is concerned. Once expected to evolve into a top 10 program, USC Marshall sagged from 16th to 17th over the past year. Call it a step forward and a step backward proposition. Technically, Marshall’s index score rose by 1.2 points, thanks to a 3.7-point increase in Compensation and a 19.3-point leap in Diversity The downside? Think 3.3- and 5.3-point downturns in Learning and Entrepreneurship respectively. 

That said, USC Marshall may only be stalling in the Bloomberg Businessweek methodology. In The Financial Times, the school has steadily marched up, gaining four spots this year to finish 21st in a ranking with six international programs above it. By the same token, USC Marshall advanced four spots to 15th in U.S. News, after teeter-tottering between 16th and 19th over the past five years. In other words, the program is still progressing on some fronts – maybe just not as fast out of the gate as expected.

Alas, USC Marshall isn’t the only program experiencing a ranking hiccup. Under the leadership of former dean Ted Snyder, the Yale School of Management emerged as a socially conscious, mission-driven, internationally-flavored alternative to the so-called ‘traditional MBA experience.’ This vision culminated in the school ranking 10th last year – a feat considering how it hovered outside the Top 10 for several years. Unfortunately, Yale SOM failed to build on this success, dropping back down to 15th. The culprits? Lower scores in both Networking and Entrepreneurship, worth a combined 30.2% of the ranking weight. Call it a disappointment for a high-prestige Ivy brand. Add to that – over the past two years – Yale SOM has also slipped six spots with The Financial Times and two spots in U.S. News – though it retains the top 10 rankings in both.  

Then again, Yale SOM has tasted the Bloomberg Businessweek top 10. This year, New York University’s Stern School slipped from 11th to 12th. That might seem insignificant except “Top 10’ is a credibility-builder – and Stern has ranked 12, 11, 11, 13, and 13 in recent years with Bloomberg Businessweek (though it has finished 10th in three of the past four years with U.S. News). The worst part? NYU Stern maintained or improved its score in every dimension except Compensation this year. The problem is that compensation accounts for 37.5% of their ranking. Let’s face it: an EQ-based culture and diverse course offerings just don’t lend themselves to making up the difference in any ranking.

That leaves Washington University’s Olin School, which tumbled from 21st to 30th. Just four years ago, Olin ranked 38th with Bloomberg Businessweek. That was before the school decided to revolutionize business education. Since then, it has launched its signature Global Immersion. Think of the typical trek turned upside down, with students spending 38 days overseas – partnering with companies and galivanting across three countries – to kick off their MBA program. Featuring the world’s best entrepreneurship program, Olin follows USC Marshall’s lead of pairing a top undergraduate business program with a newly-launched online MBA program to deepen the resources available to the full-time cohort. More than that, Olin has revamped its curriculum, making it a value-based, data-driven offering that integrates innovation and experiential learning across the board.

While this approach realizes the direction many business schools want to go, it doesn’t necessarily translate to higher rankings. In the end, Olin scored lower in every dimension except Diversity. Just goes to show, some value propositions are ineffable. They can’t be measured – but they can sure be revered and imitated. When it comes to these four schools – USC Marshall Yale SOM, NYU Stern, and Washington Olin – here’s hoping applicants look beyond ranking speed bumps and dig into these programs’ differentiators. Their strengths simply don’t play to rigid rubrics.

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