MBA Rankings
The most famous rankings for Business Schools are Financial Times’ rankings and the Economist.
Many potential MBA students are hooked on these rankings, but a few know how to read these rankings.
This article will give a very brief description how FT make their business school rankings.
How to read the Rankings
To be a qualified Business School it has to be accredited internationally by AACSB, AMBA or EQUIS. These are the three most popular accreditations for Business Schools. The Business School has to offer a full-time MBA which is older than 5 years, and must have had minimum 30 graduating students three years ago.
The Financial Times looks at about 150 to 200 Business Schools, where a lot do not meet their minimum limit of gathered data from alumnus. For instants of the 155 institutions FT reviewed in 2007, 113 qualified for the ranking.
FTs survey goes out to the alumni and for the Business School to qualify at least 20 % of the graduating class needs to answer.
Three 3 key areas for FTs ranking
- alumni salaries and career development
- the diversity and international reach of the business school and its MBA program
- the research capabilities of each school
The rankings are based on 20 criteria. Of these 8 are based on the data collected surveys (“Weighted salary (US$)” to “International mobility rank”).
Data from alumni for the last three years are collected and weighted as follows; the previous year carries 50 % of the total, two years and three years ago are given 25 % each. Salary (US$) and “Salary percentage increase” account as 40% of the score.
Eleven other criteria- based on a survey each individual School has to fill out. Here FT rates the employment statistics, gender statistics and the students’ nationalities, its faculty and board and information on doctoral qualifications.
As most of the University rankings the Business Schools are given credit for each paper published by the faculty members. The size of the faculty is also a factor. The institutions research count for 10 % of the final score.
