Looking to choose one of the top business schools in the US? Take a look at our down and dirty, nitty gritty, frank summation of how undergraduate business school rankings and top MBA rankings are made, how such lists can shape your decisions for program selection, and what you should look for when selecting the best business schools.Looking to choose one of the top business schools in the US? Take a look at our down and dirty, nitty gritty, frank summation of how undergraduate business school rankings and top MBA rankings are made, how such lists can shape your decisions for program selection, and what you should look for when selecting the best business schools.
In this College Choice Guide you will learn:Looking to choose one of the top business schools in the US? Take a look at our down and dirty, nitty gritty, frank summation of how undergraduate business school rankings and top MBA rankings are made, how such lists can shape your decisions for program selection, and what you should look for when selecting the best business schools.
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In this College Choice Guide you will learn…
- Techniques for discerning your business school needs and preferences so you can choose from the best business schools in the US and abroad.
- Criteria used in determining undergraduate business school rankings and top MBA programs.
- Criticisms of business school rankings systems and lists.
- How business school rankings are determined.
- Methodologies, strengths and weaknesses, and a brief overview of the following business school rankings lists: Bloomberg, Academic Ranking of World Universities, The Economist, Forbes, US News, and The Princeton Review.
- Using rankings systems to select the best business schools abroad and the top business schools in the US.
Selecting the Best Business School
Choosing the best business school for you is no easy task, but College Choice can make it a bit simpler. Our guide to navigating business school rankings will help you choose the best business school. Overall, it’s important to recognize that “best” is a subjective term. You need to determine what’s best for your situation, personally and professionally, before you research, apply, and enroll.
The complex part about business school rankings is that each student has different preferences, needs, and goals. If Student A is looking for a program that will allow her to maintain a flexible schedule and keep her tuition costs low, she may well be looking at different programs than Student B, who is looking for hands-on experience and academic pedigree. Plainly stated: you have to choose a program that is right for you, so it’s important to prioritize your needs, predilections, and resources as much as possible and as soon as possible.
Before digging deeply into your research, it might be good to engage in some self-knowledge exercises, perhaps even on a piece of paper so you can see exactly what you want from the top business schools in the US…
Know your priorities.
Take some time to think about what you want out of your education. Make a list of no-compromise preferences and stick to it; make a list of deal-breakers and stick to it. Perhaps you want to pursue a prestigious degree. Perhaps you want to graduate with expediency. Perhaps you’re interested in cutting-edge fields of study. Perhaps you want a rigorous social atmosphere and a “college experience.” Perhaps you want a mentorship program and access to internships. Perhaps you want a degree offering with an ethical focus. Whatever your preferences, begin your research with an understanding of what you need so that you can move through the business school rankings with clarity.
List your advantages and limitations.
What factors are in play that will shape your school experience in a personal way? Will your current employer help to pay for a degree? Are you constrained by geography or finances? Do you have a family to care for while you put yourself through school? Will you need to travel for your employer while you’re pursuing your education? This list will help you determine what you want from the best business schools and how you might best use your time and resources.
Reflect on your future.
Do some contemplating over your purpose and be able to answer more abstract questions. Why do I want a business degree? What do I hope a degree will help me accomplish? Where do I want to be ten years from today? Not only will these things help you determine the right school for you, but you will be able to use the answers as fodder for your application letters and essays when you apply to school, whether to the best business undergraduate schools or the top MBA programs.
What Makes the Best Business Schools?
There are a few general criteria used across the board in each business school rankings list, whether for undergraduate business school rankings or top MBA program rankings. Generally speaking, the top business schools in the US often receive ratings based on variations of the following categories:
Academic Quality
This is a subjective category for ranking the best business schools, but one must start somewhere, and preferences are a good place. Whether you’re looking at undergraduate business school rankings or trying to determine the best MBA programs, this category will help you develop an understanding of the strengths, program requirements, and unique characteristics and opportunities of top business schools, like distinctive program offerings, convenience, and competitiveness on the job market. Though this category is often based on qualitative data, it seems to be the most important to potential students while they are selecting from the top undergraduate business schools or best MBA programs.
Real-World Experience
This is an objective category that’s based upon the school’s offerings for experiences such as internships, faculty members’ business experience in corporations and other organizations, and post-graduate job placement data. Business school rankings are sometimes weighted toward this category because of its applied value and the top business schools prominently showcase their relevance to the ever-changing business world through the unique, practical opportunities offered to students before they officially leave school for the business world. Some schools even have direct relationships with major US corporations and organizations, which is advantageous for job placement for any post-grad.
Degree Options
The top business schools in the US offer diverse and adaptable programs. The business school rankings take into account the uniqueness of the program’s offerings in a variety of disciplines. Categories of uniqueness might include specialized degree offerings in cutting-edge business fields, like data management, crowdsourcing, content management, and social computing or focuses in classical—yet competitive—main-stays such as management, hospitality, human resources, accounting, etc. As you determine your interests in the ever-changing business world, consider the variety of offerings from the top undergraduate business schools or in the best MBA programs.
Flexibility
For many students, flexibility is crucial to success. This category is important to everyone, but may be more important to people in non-traditional situations, like students above the age of 25, students returning to school after several years, or students with work and family obligations. In our fast-paced, device oriented time, many students are looking for fully digital or hybrid classrooms where education isn’t simply happening in a classical face-to-face manner, but exists in an asynchronous digital learning environment that caters to the needs of on-the-go student populations. Such programs do exist, and are growing tremendously. Other students may be looking for alternative learning environments, like night school or consolidated curricula. In these flexible settings, degrees can often be finished quickly so that education has maximum gain at minimum disruption. Business school rankings often take into account a variety of factors regarding flexibility.
Total Cost
Any savvy business person knows that it all comes down to money, and when trying to gain entry to the top undergraduate business schools or the best MBA programs, money matters. A cost benefit analysis can be a tricky thing for business school rankings because resources are different for all students and costs are different for all universities, whether undergraduate business school rankings or the top MBA programs. Generally speaking, total cost is weighed against the other categories listed above to give students an idea of what their dollars get them on academic markets. Students pursuing a degree should become very familiar with the costs of individual class hours, digital education, general extra costs for school (like textbooks and meal plans), and weigh their resources against these costs per semester and per year, taking into account that the cost of education tends to increase year-to-year.
Are Business School Rankings Helpful to Students?
The answer to this question is complicated. Perhaps it might be better to ask “How are business school rankings helpful to students, and how are they helpful to universities?”
Business school rankings, whether for undergraduate business school rankings, the best business schools, or the top MBA programs, are a tricky business that demand an attentive and savvy consumer. It’s not enough to peruse a couple lists and declare complete knowledge of a given program or programs. A potential student must spend time discerning how the business school rankings are presented, how the best business schools are determined, and what makes a top undergraduate business school or a top MBA program better than a program of lesser stature. This will ensure that you, the student, apply to programs knowing what to expect.
How are lists like the “Top 10 Business Schools” compiled? How are the top undergraduate business school rankings determined? How can one know they’re gaining entry into a top MBA program? What are the best MBA programs in the US? And what are the top business schools in the world? Business school rankings answer these questions using data analysis. Some of that data is objective (quantitative), like costs, MAT scores, post-grad job placement material, and other numerical pieces of information. Some of that information is subjective (qualitative), like student satisfaction surveys of experiences, faculty, and campus life. Both the objective and the subjective data points matter, but they matter to students to varying degrees and for different reasons, so it’s important to understand the methodological uses of the data, how surveys are conducted, and what percentage of data in a given business school rankings list is determining the larger picture of the school’s overall quality.
How do Business School Rankings Benefit Colleges and Universities?
At the end of the day, business school rankings provide substantive marketing potential for the universities on the lists. You will often notice prominent placement of banners, badges, and ads on university websites showcasing their accolades or list achievements. Sometimes you will even see ads tailored to your internet browsing habits. You’ll also notice that universities even put similar notations on their paper promotional material and advertising. Whether in print or online, these ratings are powerful tools for a university, enticing students to apply and enroll.
It’s important to notice that some business school ranking sites do not clearly provide information concerning their methodology, information about their data sources, or other necessary pieces of open-source information that would indicate impartiality. Sometimes you have to go digging for this information when it should be readily accessible and prominently displayed. Ideally, organizations compiling rankings should consider more transparency rather than less. Be certain that what you’re looking at is clear, impartial, and that—most of all—you understand how the rankings were created. Be sure to take a quick peek at the data information as you peruse the business school rankings.
Related to this, it’s easy to see how information on business school rankings lists is beneficial to a savvy consumer. At the student’s fingertips are bite-sized pieces of data that can help potential students make better decisions, narrow his or her search, consolidate knowledge, connect with programs in a meaningful way, and help determine the best business school options to match particular needs. Whether you want entry into the top MBA programs in the US or the best undergraduate business schools, understanding business school rankings is a crucial element to your research. Don’t neglect to educate yourself!
Criticism of Business School Rankings
It isn’t hard to understand that any business school ranking system has embedded bias and potentially contains methodological incongruities. These flaws should be taken into consideration when examining business rankings lists of any kind. It is up to the consumer of information to be savvy and have a healthy skepticism for claims made on the internet. This isn’t to say that the information can’t be trusted, but that you, the potential student, must understand exactly what you’re looking at, how the data is being collected and interpreted, and how those factors might shape your decision-making. It’s the student’s responsibility to know the facts as best as he or she can.
Along these lines, would-be business program students should be aware of the criticisms of business school ranking systems, which include…
Lack of Objective Measures
Know the values of qualitative and quantitative data. While business school ranking systems use some objective methods for measurement, such as tuition costs, job placement information, and post-education salary information, some important pieces of business school rankings are based on subjective information, such as student satisfaction surveys and faculty assessments. It’s possible that some pieces of subjective data are weighed with more importance than objective data, which is why it is important for readers to understand what criteria were used in the creation of the list, and what percentage of the whole is made of partially subjective data.
Ranking Variation
Methodology matters much. It’s easy to see that the same business schools make many top 10 business school rankings lists, but their rankings fluctuate from list to list across rankings sites. This could be due to methodology, but could also be the result of limited survey populations, personal biases, and statistical narrowness in trying to discern the top MBA programs and best undergraduate business schools.
Self-fulfilling Prophecy
A bane of statistical analysis in any rundown of data is a chicken-egg scenario—how are people influenced and where does that influence begin or, stated broadly, what’s the difference between the influence and the consumer? For example, in a business school rankings list, high marks in national publications tend to draw more attention, which can significantly influence students’ desires, expectations, and newly created biases that didn’t exist in the moments before they encountered the list.
Best Business School versus Best Business Program
Many strong business schools only provide information for their full-time programs leading to a perception that the business school and the programs it offers are all the same. This means that other program measures within a given school’s structure, such as part-time programs staffed by adjunct faculty rather than full-time faculty, are not considered in data sets but exist on campuses and are part of the school’s academic profile. Sometimes these small, part-time programs have lower conditions for admission or different faculty demands which are not taken into account.
Use, Misuse, and Cooperation
Not all schools are comfortable sharing information. Some of the top business schools and best MBA programs feel strongly that ratings lists compromise the integrity of programs, oftentimes for reasons listed above. Those schools aren’t particularly cooperative because they feel that provided data gets misused for making subjective lists like the ones you might encounter when Googling “Business School Rankings.” Leading schools like INSEAD, Wharton (University of Pennsylvania), Harvard, and Sloan (MIT) are examples of top business schools that are resistant to accepting rankings and engage in limited cooperation with rankings sites.
Predicting Trends
Some of the top business schools and best MBA programs are developing cutting-edge programs that meet the diverse needs of business in the internet age. For example, the burgeoning Big Data field[1] is gaining a lot of traction in some programs, and universities are developing specialized degree disciplines to cater to student needs in fields like business analytics.[2] Other growing fields include microblogging and search engine optimization; thus, some universities are adapting their Marketing programs to digital market needs.[3] When all is said and done, business school rankings have little or no apparatus for determining the success of such programs as they are related to new or rapidly developing job markets.
[1] Information retrieved from: http://www.villanovau.com/resources/business-analysis/business-analyst-
career/#.V07Zy2grLIU
[2] Information retrieved from: http://www.stern.nyu.edu/programs-admissions/full-time-
mba/academics/specializations/business-analytics
[3] Information retrieved from: http://www.hult.edu/en/masters-degree/master-of-international-
business/curriculum/specializations/marketing/
What are the Most Reliable and Best Business School Rankings Lists?
Examining methodological approach and transparency, extra costs, and usability, here’s a brief look at a few business school rankings websites and organizations. The information presented here is recent and receives regular review and editorial work by our team at College Choice to account for major changes.
Unless otherwise noted, these business school rankings deal with either a top undergraduate business school ranking lists or a best MBA programs lists. The reason for this is simple: in many cases, methodologies overlap to such a great degree that creating a separate analysis of each list would be repetitive and tedious to readers, and we wanted to streamline the information as much as possible for succinct, accessible review. Unless otherwise noted explicitly, it can be safely assumed that the methodologies between ranking systems from a given platform, say Bloomberg, are similar, whether for the best MBA programs in the US or the top undergraduate business school rankings in the US.
Bloomberg
With a stylish and readable presentation of data, Bloomberg’s best undergraduate business schools list is well worth more than a tertiary examination. Broken down into easy-to-navigate portions, undergraduate business school rankings are rendered simply and are both visually appealing and easy to understand. The list allows each user to search for an individual school which then aggregates the data from a recent data set and presents the information in small pieces that allow for reasonable comparison.
Academic Ranking of World Universities
The ARWU is conducted by researchers at the Center for World-Class Universities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Originally published in Chinese in 2003, the book made its way into English via The European Center for Higher Education and now exists both in print and online in English. In conjunction with the International Conference on World-Class Universities (a conference held every other year since 2005).
The Economist
Gathered from internet questionnaires, one from business schools and another from recent grads of the same programs, The Economist business school rankings list reflects current trends in business school markers in a particular year.
Forbes
Forbes’s best business school rankings list is a compensation-based look at what a business school offers students using content data about salaries, bonuses, and exercised stock options. In all, the Forbes rankings offer a birds-eye view of the possibilities of return on investment for would-be employees post-graduation day.
U.S. News
Whether determining the top 10 business schools, the top undergraduate business school rankings, or the best MBA programs, US News is an often consulted analysis of business school rankings. US News produces many kinds of lists for business school rankings, among the most popular are the best undergraduate business schools and the best MBA programs, but it’s important to carefully examine the ways US News creates its lists.
The Princeton Review
The Princeton Review’s survey-driven analysis puts together top 10 business school lists from several different disciplines in many different categories. This site is simple to use and accessible, exploring the top business schools in the US and abroad. Undergraduate business school rankings and the top MBA programs are measured by the Princeton Review system, which is not affiliated with Princeton University but is attached to the publisher Random House, who sells myriad college-related materials, such as guides and test prep booklets, using the The Princeton Review brand name.
Note: Don’t forget to call your mom and let her know where you want to go to college.
