Should we Trust the US News MBA Rankings?

Choosing the right MBA program is one of the most important decisions in your professional career. Before you start using rankings to make that decision, shouldn't you learn how they work?

Rankings are ultimately designed by publications to create controversy and therefore increase readership. If they accepted that the quality of schools didn't change radically from year to year, no one would need to read the article.

These are important points to make when consulting the 2021 edition of the Best Business School Rankings by US News. This ranking is often viewed as the most accurate and prestigious, and yet it, like other MBA rankings, fails to properly grade business schools and place them in their proper context.

(If you want a stable list of leaders in MBA education that isn't designed to artificially change the rankings each year to attract readers, check out our directory of the top MBA programs, which focus on the ranking formula. Doesn't do, but on the curriculum, the class profile, employment report, and culture of each MBA program.)

US News MBA Ranking, 2021

1.	Stanford
1.	Wharton
3.	Kellogg
3.	Booth
5.	MIT Sloan
6.	Harvard
7.	Haas Berkeley
8.	Columbia
9.	Yale
10.	NYU Stern
11.	Darden
12.	Tuck
12.	Fuqua
12.	Ross
15.	Cornell – Johnson
16.	UCLA
17.	Marshall
18.	McCombs
19.	Tepper
20.	UNC Kenan-Flagler
20.	Foster
22.	Goizueta
23.	Kelley
23.	Owen
25.	McDonough
25.	Jones

 

US How News Builds Your MBA Ranking

US For news rankings, business schools were evaluated using several different metrics, which were divided into three categories:

• Peer assessment - 25%

• Recruiter Assessment - 15%

• School data - 60%

Deans and directors of business schools were asked to rank peer institutions in the peer assessment. School-supplied corporate recruiters and company contacts were surveyed for the recruiter assessment section of the rankings.

The school data is further divided into the following sections:

• Employment rate for full-time MBA program graduates at the undergraduate level (7%) and after three months (14%) - 21%

• Mean GMAT and GRE Scores - 16.25%

• Average starting salary and bonus - 14%

• Average undergraduate GPA - 7.5%

• Acceptance Rate - 1.25%

General overview

US News highly values ​​the opinions of professional employers as well as the deans and directors of some 131 business schools. Because of this, the ranking of peer institutions and recruiters is the final U.S.

Peer Institution Assessment

This may seem like a reasonable approach: allow all 131 schools to grade each other, giving each program the same input for ranking.

And for each of the different program groups - top 3 schools, schools 4th to 10th, 10th to 20th, and so on - the rankings will be relatively accurate, because schools competing with each other will know their rivals. Where are they excellent and where are they falling short. But do you really think that Clemson University, U.S. Ranked 83rd by News, Stanford's #1 Activity Any knowledge, let alone interest? The same reverse is true: Stanford has no real insight into Clemson. The fact is, the two schools have a completely different target group of applicants, and it doesn't make sense to ask the two schools to grade each other.

And take it a step further: Think about the schools that are competing, especially for the top positions. Schools like Stanford and Wharton have a vested interest in downgrading Harvard: they won't give Harvard a terrible score, but they'll go down as far as they think they can get away with. And why wouldn't they? These schools are ranked against each other, so you'll have to push someone else down to climb the rankings.

Recruitment evaluation

Recruiter evaluation is also problematic, especially as some employers will know a lot about the school they've drawn in the past, but not about the schools they've never worked with. In fact, no one could possibly know enough about each school to give each a fair, informed ranking.

It is also worth noting that the U.S. The names of employers surveyed by News were supplied by schools, so the fairness of the review is compromised. An MBA program can supply the name of an employer where they have very successfully hired a small number of people and leave a company where they have hired many people with mixed results. This way schools can turn the outcome in their favor.

Leaving aside questions of fairness or manipulativeness, we must also consider that, for some schools, a very high, meaningful reputation with regional recruiters may be overshadowed by a weak national reputation. This was particularly true of the University of Washington-Michael G. The case with the Foster School of Business is clear.

Foster's recruiter assessment score is the lowest among the top 25 schools, and the peer assessment score is second to last. However, with employment rates of 86.2% and 98.9% at the undergraduate level and three months after graduation, Foster ranks 20th overall. Foster tops the employment-at-three-months list, long ahead of Darden (96.3%) and Ross (96%).

Foster's low recruiter and peer assessment scores downgrade its overall score, which may discourage applicants from applying. This is the U.S. The news reveals a very real lack of rankings: Anyone interested in a tech job will miss out on an excellent program, because the U.S. And yet Foster places most of its graduates in the Pacific Northwest, and more specifically, the Seattle area. For this reason, business schools and recruiters who are not from the field will give Foster a poor rating, while those in the know realize that if the applicant's goal is to land a job at Microsoft or Amazon, an MBA from Foster would be an excellent one. like.

Employment rate

By feeding employment rates directly into their rankings, US News again fails to consider the broader context of certain data points.

Consider the case of Harvard and Stanford. Stanford, which tops the overall ranking, has the lowest employment rate (67.5%) at the undergraduate level. Given its stature, Harvard has an equally disappointing employment rate.

It doesn't make sense: How can two of the world's most prestigious business schools have such a low rate of employment, at graduation and three months later?

That's because graduates from Harvard and Stanford, unlike graduates from other schools, are unemployed because they choose to be, not because they can't find a job. Most of the Harvard and Stanford alumni can get jobs. Because of this, they are waiting for the perfect offer. Therefore, a low employment rate does not reflect weakness, but comes from a point of strength. Harvard and Stanford students have so many opportunities that they can wait for the right opportunity for themselves.

This is the U.S. The news is not reflected in the rankings, and it is only because these programs perform so well in other categories that they have been able to maintain their high positions.

 

US news vs forbes

When consulting the rankings, potential MBA applicants may be struck by the dramatic differences between each listing. How could a school rise and fall so markedly in a ranking that could possibly be measuring the same thing?

By analyzing specific entries from different rankings, we see how these lists don't measure the same thing at all: wildly inconsistent methodology leads to wildly inconsistent results. We also begin to see how, for each ranking, an arbitrary decision to highlight one aspect of the MBA experience will favor some programs and penalize others.

As a US-focused publication, the Forbes MBA rankings are often consulted in conjunction with US News. The methodology used by Forbes can be found on our Forbes MBA Rankings page. In short, Forbes only takes into account how much (financially) one gets from participating in an MBA.

Some of the most noticeable discrepancies are selected in the following table:

	Forbes ranking	U.S. News ranking
Wharton	5th	2nd
Booth	1st	4th
Haas Berkeley	11th	7th
NYU Stern	20th	10th
Tuck	6th	12th
Cornell – Johnson	9th	15th

 

The biggest difference can be seen in NYU Stern's rankings; 10th vs 20th. This distinction is very interesting, especially since Stern has no U.S. The second highest on the news list was the average initial compensation. Intuitively, this would mean that Stern should also rank higher on Forbes' list. However, Forbes also takes into account tuition, which is relatively high for NYU Stern. Finally, Forbes bases its ranking on total profits in the five years following an MBA, while US News only takes into account starting salaries. Because of this, Stern is ranked relatively low by Forbes, while the high compensation and employment percentage means that NYU Stern has reached the top 10 in the US News Best Business Schools rankings.

Apart from the specific differences between the rankings of different schools, there is also a conceptual difference between these two rankings. The US News Ranking tries to rank the total experiential value of an MBA, where the Forbes ranking focuses on the ultimate, financial outcome. In theory, the U.S. News can rank a school that adds no financial value to its graduates more than a school that adds value. On the Forbes ranking, however, a school that doesn't add any financial value would be incredibly bad.

US News vs Businessweek

Another US-focused ranking, reading through Businessweek, raises the same question: How can News and Businessweek rankings vary so widely? A full breakdown of Businessweek's methodology can be found on the Businessweek MBA Rankings page. In a nutshell, Businessweek asked students and recruiters to grade business schools on four weighted categories, including compensation, networking, learning, and entrepreneurship.

The most noticeable differences between the two are presented in the following table:

	Businessweek ranking	US News ranking
Wharton	6th	2nd
Kellogg	10th	3rd
Yale	14th	9th
Darden	5th	11th
Tuck	2nd	12th
Fuqua	20th	13th

 

These differences can be largely explained by looking at the sub-rankings that Businessweek has created in its approach. Compensation rankings, for example, closely match US News rankings. But as other sub-rankings begin to fall apart, Businessweek's overall ranking becomes less and less aligned with US News.

For example, Wharton ranks 70th and 31st in Learning and Entrepreneurship, respectively, which suggests that their ranking according to Businessweek is only 6th and still ranks first on the US News list.

Topping the charts on networking, Tuck scored 5th on compensation and learning, which explains why they come in (surprisingly) second in the Businessweek MBA rankings.

US News MBA Rankings: Key Facts

Like it or not, the US News Rankings is the most prestigious and trusted list of the "top" US business schools. This fact, combined with the flawed methodology described above, makes this a particularly troublesome list. The rankings will continue to make new headlines every year, and will consequently constitute many judgments—whether eligible or not—about the quality of MBA programs. But at least you, savvy readers, now understand how US News misrepresents key data points and fails to live up to standards of fairness. So go through the list with caution, and take US News rankings with a grain of salt.

 

So How Can You Find the Best MBA Programs (Without Ranking)?

Once you have roughly determined which schools you are eligible to attend – and rankings can certainly be a factor in this preliminary list – we encourage you to backtrack on rankings and Instead let's focus on practical questions that will help you figure out which MBA program will provide value to your career. These are simple, practical questions:

• Does the school have relationships with your target employers?

• Is the alumni network interesting to your post-MBA career field and location?

• Is the curriculum going to fill the gaps in your skills and experiences, both inside and outside the academic classroom?

• Are the Faculty and Research Center relevant to your interests?

• Will you fit in culturally at school?

Answering these questions will help you find an MBA program that can enhance your career.