BusinessWeek released its much awaited biannual, full-time MBA rankings. The rankings showed slight movement: Columbia went from #10 in 06 to #7 in 08. Wharton went from #2 to #4. Kelley climbed from #18 to #15.
Frankly, don't pay too much attention to the absolute ranking or even slight movement. Take advantage of BW's rich, informative database and fantastic resources for applicants. Then choose what's important to you and do your own ranking.
Top 30 U.S. Programs
1 University of Chicago
2 Harvard University
3 Northwestern University (Kellogg)
4 University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
5 University of Michigan (Ross)
6 Stanford University
7 Columbia University
8 Duke University (Fuqua)
9 MIT (Sloan)
10 UC Berkeley (Haas)
11 Cornell University (Johnson)
12 Dartmouth (Tuck)
13 NYU (Stern)
14 UCLA (Anderson)
15 Indiana University (Kelley)
16 University of Virginia (Darden)
17 UNC - Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler)
18 Southern Methodist (Cox)
19 Carnegie Mellon (Tepper)
20 University of Notre Dame (Mendoza)
21 Texas - Austin
22 Brigham Young (Marriott)
23 Emory University (Goizueta)
24 Yale University
25 University of Southern California (Marshall)
26 University of Maryland (Smith)
27 University of Washington (Foster)
28 Washington University (Olin)
29 Georgia Tech
30 Vanderbilt University (Owen)
Top 10 Non-U.S. MBA Programs
1 Queens University
2 IE Business School
3 INSEAD
4 Western Ontario (Ivey)
5 London Business School
6 ESADE
7 IMD
8 Toronto (Rotman)
9 IESE
10 Oxford (Saîd)
BW bases its rankings on employer and student surveys as well as school research output or "intellectual capital." This year for the first time, in a nod to the economic crisis, it is also including a ranking based on ROI and years to recoup the MBA investment. Not surprisingly, European schools, which tend to be one-year programs, are at the top of the chart. More surprising: HBS ranks 50 out of 50 in this chart. I guess assumptions matter.
