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Join us for What’s New With AcceptU for 2025 on 1/22 at 8 pm EST. Space is limited, register today!
It seems that every other day, another publication, website or blog is putting out a new ranking of business schools. While applicants should not apply to schools based solely on rank, we certainly acknowledge their importance in the admissions process.
Today, let’s provide some perspective by breaking down how one such ranking, put out by US News and World Report, is conducted.
US News ranks MBA programs based on how well they satisfy their two main constituencies, students and corporate recruiters, as well as on the research output by faculty members. These criteria have stayed about the same for the last twenty years.
The ranking process begins with a survey sent out to students of the most recent graduating class. The survey asks them about the quality of teaching, the effectiveness of career services and other aspects of their school experience. Professors of educational psychology then examine responses in order to ensure that the responses have not been systematically answered in an attempt to influence the outcome.
Stage two of the ranking process involves corporate MBA recruiters. These recruiters are asked to rate programs based on the quality of MBA grads they have hired. Once these scores have been tallied, the total points for each program are tabulated. Points are assigned as follows: the number one ranked school (according to grads) is given 75 points, the number two ranked school is given 74 points and so on. These points are then combined with the recruiter rankings.
Lastly, each program’s “intellectual-capacity” is tallied based on the number of articles published by the school’s faculty in 20 publications, ranging from the Journal of Accounting Research to the Harvard Business Review. After this, the scores are adjusted for faculty size. Extra points are awarded to programs whose faculty have been published or reviewed in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg Businessweek.
An MBA program’s rank should be used in conjunction with other criteria when determining whether that school should be one you should apply to.
