Potential Flaw in MBA Rankings Shuffles Results
Rankings of MBA schools are a dime a dozen. Just about every publication focused on business offers a yearly report of business school rankings. Most people accept the rankings for what they are, but recently, Glenn Hubbard, the dean of Columbia Business School, published an essay that examines the methodology of the ranking system.
By examining not just the outputs– job offers, salary– but also the inputs– acceptance rates and yield– Hubbard believes prospective students can get a much clearer understanding of b-school rankings. In light of Hubbard’s essay, Poets & Quants reexamined their own yearly rankings in a recent article and reinterpreted them to more accurately reflect Hubbard’s observations.
“Hubbard invites applicants to ‘put these pieces together… and the picture that emerges might be shocking to some.’ So that is exactly what Poets&Quants did, starting with our own ranking of the top 25 U.S. business schools. To measure inputs, we collected two sets of data: The number of applications an MBA program receives against the number of class seats available (which is preferable to total applications because smaller schools obviously would be at an unfair advantage) and yield, the percentage of applicants who enroll in the MBA program once admitted (because this number tells you which schools are preferred by candidates and which ones are not). We then compared those two “inputs” against the “outputs” recommended by Dean Hubbard: salary and job offers, or more specifically average starting salary and bonus and the percentage of a class employed three months after graduation. All the data is for the Class of 2014 which graduated last spring.”
To learn more about Poets & Quants methodology and to view the new rankings, visit their website
