With Bloomberg BusinessWeek scheduled to release its annual ranking of MBA programs today, November 16th, at 11 a.m. EST, we’re pleased to announce that Clear Admit will be hosting a chat moderated by our own Graham Richmond and Alex Brown to dissect and debate the results. Please join us in the regular chat room beginning at 10:30 a.m. RSVP here to let us know you’re coming!
Bloomberg BW has made multiple changes to its methodology in recent years, resulting in significant volatility in terms of where schools fall on the list even when not much has changed year over year at the individual schools themselves. For example, last year Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) shot up to second from seventh the year before, and Duke’s Fuqua School followed right on its heels, moving from eighth to third. Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business had one of the year’s biggest gains, rocketing up nine spots to break into the top five, from a mere 14th place finish the year before. But perhaps the most shocking of all, at least among the top 25, was the Jones School of Business at Rice University—or “Rice Business” as it likes to be called—catapulting 11 spots to number eight to secure its first-ever appearance in the top 10.
Of course, for some schools to go up, others must come down. Suffering backslides last year were the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, down from second to fourth, as well as the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and MIT Sloan School of Management, each down a spot to finish seventh and eighth respectively. Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, Columbia Business School, and UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business were all demoted year over year as well. One of the few constants, in fact, was Harvard Business School, which stayed put at No. 1.
These wild fluctuations have called many to call the credibility of the ranking into question. But it certainly makes for a fun spectator sport—which is why we thought a live chat to discuss this year’s results as they are released could be great. As a refresher, we’ve shared below how Bloomberg BW compiled its list last year—though it will be interesting to see if there are further shifts in the methodology this time around.
How Bloomberg BW Compiled Its 2016 List
To arrive at its 2016 MBA ranking, Bloomberg BW assessed schools based on five factors: a survey of MBA recruiters, weighted at 35 percent; an alumni survey, weighted at 30 percent; a survey of the 2016 graduating class, weighted at 15 percent; the school’s placement rate, weighted at 10 percent, and the starting compensation for the class of 2016, weighted at 10 percent. What this means, as the magazine points out, is that “it’s possible to rank highly without knocking every category out of the park.” Case in point, Stanford GSB came in second overall even though it ranked a meager 57th for job placement. (Bloomberg BW measures job placement as the percentage of graduates who land full-time employment within three months of graduation out of those seeking it—the figure reported by Stanford was 86.2 percent, compared to an average 89.1 percent among all schools.)
To register for tomorrow’s chat in advance, please click here. Or just show up in the general chat room tomorrow anytime between 10:30 and 12 p.m. We hope you’ll join us!
