The Generally Accepted MBA Program Rankings

In an earlier post we discussed some of the problems with the annually published full time MBA ranking reports and why prospective b-school students shouldn’t pay much attention to the fluctuations on the list.  This blog post will delve into our view on rankings.  It also generally represents the business community at large, and is also borne at by the depth of recruiting done by the most prestigious companies at these programs.     

The first group of schools are the Tier One programs.  They have the most widely recognized names and are sure to convey a high level of respect for the degree holder.  Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton make up this list, and in this order for the most part.  Some Stanford grads may quibble with me since their school is even more difficult to get in and its reputation may be limited by its smaller size, but generally HBS is the best regarded, particularly for management while Stanford is best regarded in Silicon Valley and Wharton on Wall Street. 

Closely following this top tear are schools you could almost consider Tier 1-A.  Nearly as difficult to get into and universally recognized within the business community, they are not as well-known elsewhere.  Schools in this tier (in no particular order) are Columbia, Chicago, MIT and Kellogg.  These schools are also distinguished by strong identities with particular functions:  Columbia and Chicago in finance, Kellogg for marketing and MIT for all things quantitative and operations.  In some circles a major in one of these specialist areas may mean more than a degree from one of the Tier 1 programs. 

The next tier is composed of programs that round out the Top 20 or so.  Some of these schools have specialist reputations; others are more well regarded broadly.  They also represent the best of the public universities.  These schools are Stern, Darden, Haas, Texas, Michigan, Cornell, Duke, UCLA, Dartmouth, North Carolina and Notre Dame.  In the US, the top international programs such as INSEAD would also be included here.     

 So there you have it.  It’s definitely not a hard and fast list though.  Honorable mentions should be given to schools like USC or Ohio State.  We here are 7L know the admissions processes are far from perfect so there are many examples of folks that could/should have gotten admission to a stronger program but fell through the cracks.  However the rankings in the perception of the business community don’t change on an annual basis.  It’s been like this for a while and will probably remain so for a while.  There are however two exceptions to this rule that we will cover later. . .