The 54 "Top 20" MBA Programs Averaged Ranking

The 54 "Top 20" MBA Programs Averaged Ranking

Jun, 18, 2008

This is the second of two posts on MBA Rankings. The first post is here. See also my ranking of these programs by acceptance rate.
Click here for all of my rankings tables together in one post.

In what follows, I have built upon the data I collected on the 54 programs worldwide (Table 1) that are generally identified by major ranking lists as “Top 20.” While it seemed quite useful to simply collect all the data together so that I could see which programs were considered “Top 20” by the most well known ranking lists, I wanted to see what would happen if I simply determined the average ranking for each of the 54 schools and so that is what I did in Table 2. In Table 3, I eliminated all the calculations and added in “The 98,” my ranking of MBA programs by post-MBA salary.

TABLE 2: “CALCULATION OF AVERAGE RANKINGS FOR “THE 54″ TOP 20 MBA PROGRAMS WORLDWIDE”
SKIP THIS PART AND GO TO TABLE 3 IF YOU DON’T CARE HOW I PUT THE AVERAGED RANKINGS TOGETHER
Actually I copied this method from one used by Real Clear Politics (RCP) for looking at Polling Data. The situation is similar because the RCP averages, just like mine, do not take account for differences in the methods by which the initial calculations were made. I will enter into the debate about the various problems with all of these publication’s rankings, not because I am unbiased, but because I am. As I am no statistician, I used the following rather simple method to make my calculation:

1. Schools that were not ranked in the Top 20 on a specific list that they qualified for were given the value of 21. By assigning the value of 21, I have not weighted the value of the individual rankings.

2. I calculated average value by taking scores for all six rankings and
dividing by 6 for US programs and 5 for non-US Programs as
US News and World Report only ranks US.

3. The school with the lowest total has the top average rank.

4. Schools with the same average numerical value have the same rank.
Obvious unsolved problems with my methods that I am aware of :
1. Some ranking do not actually rank 20 programs.
2: While US News and W World Report, FT, and EIU‘s each have one comprehensive list, the other four rankings break-up schools into two or more lists, which results in Businessweek, Wall Street Journal, and Forbes having more impact on the averaged ranking.
3. I could have used FT’s regional lists, but choose to use the Worldwide list.

Here is the result (Click to enlarge it):

TABLE 3: “AVERAGED RANKING FOR THE 54 TOP 20 MBA PROGRAMS WORLDWIDE”

Table 3 does two things. First, it simply presents the programs in rank order. I am placing them here as well for ease of reading, but in order to see the second thing it does, you need to look at the JPEG (see below):

AVERAGED RANK FOR THE 54 “Top 20” MBA Programs
1. U. of Chicago GSB
2. IMD, Switzerland
3. London Business School
4. Stanford University GSB
5. Dartmouth College: Tuck
6. Harvard Business School
7. Columbia Business School
8. IESE Business School
9. MIT: Sloan
10. UC Berkeley: Haas
11. Queen’s School of Business
12. Northwestern U.: Kellogg
12. U. of Pennsylvania: Wharton
14. IE Business School
15. ESADE Business School
16. New York University: Stern
17. SDA Bocconi Italy
18. INSEAD
18. U. of Michigan: Ross
20. York University: Schulich
21. Manchester Business School
22. Lancaster U., Mngt. School
23. U. of Virginia: Darden
23. Yale School of Management
25. IPADE
26. Duke University: Fuqua
27. Cranfield S. of Management
27. U. of Western Ontario: Ivey
29. HEC Paris, France
30. Cornell University: Johnson
31. RSM Erasmus University
32. HEC Montreal, Canada
33. UNC: Kenan-Flagler
34. CEIBS
35. Carnegie Mellon: Tepper, US
36. UCLA: Anderson
37. U. of Oxford : Said
37. U. of Toronto: Rotman
39. AGSM
40. City University: Cass
40. ESSEC
40. UBC: Sauder
40. U. of Cambridge: Judge
44. EGADE
45. Henley Business School
46. McGill
47. Thunderbird
47. U. of TX at Austin: McCombs
48. Hong Kong UST Bus. School
49. U. of Iowa: Tippie
50. Indiana University: Kelley
51. Brigham Young: Marriot
51. USC: Marshall
52. Ashridge
53. Michigan State: Broad
54. Indian School of Business

The second thing that Table 3 does is include the post-MBA salary based on my own ranking, “The 98.” As you may have gathered from this earlier attempt at looking at MBA rankings, I have a bias towards that single characteristic that all B-schools have in common: market value. My use of FT for the purpose of ranking schools in post-MBA salary order relates directly to my belief that applicants should calculate the ROI of the programs they plan to apply to. An MBA is an investment and you can’t calculate the rate of return on investment by looking at a school’s ranking, instead you need to think about starting salary, lost income, and other tangible and intangible factors that will make such an investment either a success or a failure.

The wide ranging results that I saw when I put Table 1 together convinced me even more that looking at starting salary makes the most sense. Since I am focused on rankings here, I simply added “The 98” rank for any program that had my list. If you want to see the starting post-MBA salaries, you can find them here.

TABLE 3:
(Click to enlarge it)
I hope you found this post helpful or at least entertaining. By the way if you find any errors in my data, please let me know. I have already spent too much time on this to triple check my numbers.

Questions? Write comments or contact me directly at adammarkus@gmail.com. Please see my FAQ regarding the types of questions I will respond to.

-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス

MBA留学 ビジネススクール カウンセリング コンサルティング MBA ランキング