How MBAs Rank Their Own Business Schools

Maryland’s Smith School of Business

How Graduates Rank Their Business Schools (Continued)

STANFORD TOPS FORBES AND BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK FOR ALUMNI HAPPINESS

Alas, Bloomberg Businessweek doesn’t provide the only tool to measure graduate satisfaction. In 2014, Forbes surveyed 4,600 MBAs from the Class of 2008 to gauge their level of happiness. In this exercise, Forbes focused on the quality of the education, along with how well it compared to other MBAs, along with their current level of job satisfaction. Again, Stanford ranked on top. The University of California-Berkeley (Haas) and the University of Chicago (Booth) also made Forbes top 10 for happiness. However, several highly ranked programs, such as Dartmouth College (Tuck), Indiana University (Kelley), and Duke University (Fuqua), scored higher in Forbes ranking, which weighed more heavily the outcomes that came years after graduation.

In fact, the results of Bloomberg Businessweek’s single question (on how likely graduates would be to encourage MBA candidates to enroll in their program) also isn’t indicative of how graduates ranked their alma maters overall. Bloomberg Businessweek notes that the Class of 2014 was also asked about “the quality of academic and career development offerings, the qualities of the student body and school culture, and students’ evaluations of their own skill sets.” When this larger context is factored in, several rankings change.

DIFFERENT METHODOLOGIES YIELD DIFFERENT RESULTS

Most strikingly, Stanford dropped from first to 17th when the entire student survey is included. However, the University of Maryland (Smith), which ranked second on whether graduates would recommend the school to applicants, moved up to number one. Similarly, UCLA (Anderson) jumped from tenth to third when all survey responses were calculated, while the University of California-Berkeley (Haas) held steady at fourth. In addition, several ‘name’ schools jumped into the top 10 in the full student surveys, including Cornell University (Johnson), the University of North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler), Yale University, Dartmouth College (Tuck), and the University of Michigan (Ross). Similarly, schools like Booth, Wharton, Harvard, and Kellogg slipped out of the top ten when students answered the full range of questions about their experience.

The Financial Times also surveys how alumni feel towards their school. In their 2014 ranking, Harvard Business School ranked number one – and has done so for five consecutive years. They were followed by Stanford (a perennial number two) and Wharton (a perennial number three). In the Financial Times’ methodology, however, alumni were asked to rank up to three schools for whether they would recruit their graduates. In this more expansive approach – where alumni weren’t tethered to just their own alma mater – programs like Northwestern (Kellogg), MIT (Sloan), Columbia, and New York University (Stern) fared better. At the same time, the University of Maryland (Smith), the University of California-Berkeley (Haas) and UCLA (Anderson) scored lower.

Bottom line: If you ask graduates straight up for their gut recommendation, programs like Stanford, Wharton, and Kellogg will earn the highest marks. If you broaden the scope and pose deeper questions to alumni about their experiences, programs like Indiana (Kelley), Cornell (Johnson), Dartmouth (Tuck), and North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler) come to the forefront. If you want to factor in potential alumni employers, the big three – Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton – remain dominant. Methodology is fate, it appears. And so is word of mouth. Question is, do your alumni, peers, or family members share your vision and values? And have you yourself truly identified what you want and what’s valuable to you? Until you do, such rankings – and the sentiments that they’re based on – will truly have little value to you.

DON’T MISS: THE HIGHEST AND LOWEST PAID MBAs OF 2014

To see how your favorite schools rank on both measures, continue below. To read Bloomberg Businessweek’s student reviews, click here and then click on a school link.

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek

10 Most Endorsed Schools By Students

Rank	School	Score
1	Stanford	4.993
2	University of Maryland (Smith)	4.986
3	Harvard Business School	4.974
4	University of California-Berkeley (Haas)	4.965
5	Brigham Young University (Marriott)	4.964
6	University of Chicago (Booth)	4.961
7	Wharton School	4.960
8	University of Virginia (Darden)	4.953
9	Northwestern University (Kellogg)	4.950
10	UCLA (Anderson)	4.940

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek

Overall 2014 Student Survey Ranking

Rank	School
1	University of Maryland (Smith)
2	Indiana University (Kelley)
3	UCLA (Anderson)
4	University of California-Berkeley (Haas)
5	Cornell University (Johnson)
6	University of North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler)
7	Yale University
8	University of Southern California (Marshall)
9	Dartmouth College (Tuck)
10	University of Michigan (Ross)
11	Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper)
12	Brigham Young University (Marriott)
13	MIT (Sloan)
14	Emory University (Goizueta)
15	University of Chicago (Booth)
16	Georgetown University (McDonough)
17	Stanford Graduate School of Business
18	Wharton School
19	University of Virginia (Darden)
20	Columbia University