EssaySnark

Duke is #3 on the 2016 BusinessWeek rankings

by EssaySnark - Discusses 4 Comments

We asked you to exercise some critical thinking skills recently.

Why not turn those same skills to evaluating the MBA rankings?

Here’s the 2016 BusinessWeek list. Duke #3. Why?

The simplistic answer is that they scored at 90.5 which is higher than Booth and lower than Stanford.

But WHY???

Is that the position you’d expect Duke to be at?

We’re not knocking Duke. That’s an honest question.

What about the Jones school, at Rice University? They’re at #8. Why?

Comments? Reaction? Discussion?

Please base this on the actual data on the BusinessWeek chart. Here’s a link to the BusinessWeek rankings page where you can sort to your heart’s content.

Here's what others have said about this:

  1. The reasoning behind these rankings I feel are deeply flawed. It is more of a popularity contest if nothing else. Surveys represent 80% of the criteria. These surveys should not be given so much weight because the people taking them are far from experts. A 2-year MBA student who has spent 20 months at one school knows very little about the the other schools in the rankings. An employer, who is probably an MBA, but now far removed knows even less. Same thing goes for alumni’s.
    The data is so hard to quantify because they only thing you really know is gmat, gpa, and salary data. But we all know that is only a small piece of the pie.
    I think a really interesting survey to do would be to poll the deans of all of the mba programs in the top 50 and have them rank the programs 1-49(leaving out their own program). I think you would probably come up with a very similar list of schools especially in the top 20. Schools know where they fit in.

    Reply

    • Yes to all – and…. where is everybody else on this one??? Woulda thought that this would bring out all the smart cookies and analytical minds!! We’ll give ’em another day or so and then come back with some remarks to you, rwelch9439.

      Reply

  2. I have a few comments on the methodology:

    1) For the Employer Survey, it mentions that “over 500 companies” participated. I always take these employer surveys with a grain of salt, because without being able to see what companies responded I have to conclude that they are primarily Fortune 500 companies that are well known and have HR departments with the time to answer the survey. This means that smaller (or more obscure) companies, that may be high pay and/or prestige (startups, PE/VC, hedge funds) are not included.

    2) Only surveying alumni from the classes of 2008, 2009, and 2010 seems strange. Why would you not include alumni from 10, 20, 30 years ago? Why does the opinion of a 35-year-old alumnus hold more weight than that of a 50-year-old alumnus? If nothing else, the 50 year old has likely reached a higher point in their career and has had more time to reflect on their b-school experience. Personally, I value that older alumnus’ opinion.

    3) Salary should have a higher weight. Salary is an objective and quantifiable value of one’s worth. Obviously there are ways to game this number, but I think that it still should hold equal or more weight than the qualitative opinions used in other parts of the methodology. If you sort by salary, the rankings become a bit more what you would expect.

    Reply

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