TargetKellogg2024 wrote:
Hey
GMATGenius!I really liked your ranking (personally more so because Kellogg is #2)
The first draft of the ranking that I created looked more or less the same, but I had to change the way I was approaching this. For me, it was very important to factor in both- the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the school in ranking them. The quantitative factors, as you have rightly considered, are the acceptance rate, yield rate, employment rate etc. However, these data points need not necessarily reflect the true value. For example, from my extensive research, I have learnt that though Stanford's reported employment at three months is just 70-80%, it's not because the people are not able to get a job. That's because people do not wanna take up the job that they have received. In fact, one Stanford graduate whose interview I watched mentioned that he got 8 jobs within 3 months of graduation that he didn't accept and therefore, he was reported as one of those remaining 20-30% unemployed students. In a different scenario, I noticed that one specific school has jan average GMAT score of ~730. If you look at this average score superficially, you might consider this school in the same league as the M7s or Top 10. However, when you dive deeper into the other linked factors, you'd know that the school has found their way around US News ranking. They get this average GMAT from just one third of the class who have provided GMAT scores. Rest others were admitted through GRE or test waivers. This brings to another challenge- many business schools have started waiving off the test requirements. This again, needs to be considered while calculating the rankings. There are many other similar challenges with just the quantitative factors and therefore, I think that these factors could be deceptive.
On the other hand, qualitative factors are the same as well. It's almost next to impossible to evaluate and rank the schools in terms of their culture, community, and resources that they offer to their students. We all know that anyone who graduates from the M7 will have all the doors to their preferred career track opened. It is also widely known that Tuck has the best alumni network, even better than the M7s. It is also known that Kellogg has the best marketing department and places a lot (still fewer than in Conulting, Tech, or Finance) in marketing, and their salaries are relatively less. To compensate for these challenges, any many other similar challenges, I thought to consider peer and recruiter assessment scores. Though these assessment scores cannot be trusted at their face value, we are considering them honest because after all, as I mentioned earlier, even the quantitative data points are not completely true.
These are all very good points! After some thought, it seems fair that Stanford was penalized when looking solely at employment rate because a larger percentage reported not having jobs. (some things to think about- maybe other schools are underreporting their unemployment but this is the data that was given so not much we can do about that; if it had been a school with a smaller brand name, would we be arguing that employment rate should have a smaller weight in the ranking?)
In that one situation, even though the student had multiple offers, they still do not have paid employment 3 months after their MBA. Was the program not able to help them achieve a job they wanted, or if it was, why did they not accept?
I have a solution that could account for the test optional programs. Let's say a in a ranking that GMAT score is weighted at 0.15 and the average GMAT score across all test takers is ~590. If a program has 100% of the class submit GMATs and the average is a score of 700, then the contribution of this score would be 0.15*700*1. If a program has 50% of their class submit GMATs and the average score is 650, then you could assume that the remaining scores are all the average score of ~590. So the contribution of GMAT for this school would be 0.15*(650*0.5 + 590*0.5). This is just for demonstration. You would still need to normalize the scores and do the same for GRE. This will also change things a lot with the introduction of the new shorter GRE and shorter GMAT where there are scoring differences.
But, yes, you are right. End of the day it is just a ranking. Students should look to see if the program will help them meet their career goals and if the community culture is a fit for them. It is still 2 years of your life, so you want to enjoy the journey! That is a big reason why I chose Team Fuqua! 😝
I'm glad you liked where it put Kellogg and Darden!
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21 Apr 2024, 20:42
MBA Comparisons 2024 - GMAT Club.xlsx [23.69 KiB] 
