How NOT to use the rankings

Don’t give them too much importance. Don’t replace research and self-reflection with school ranking to determine where you apply or attend. Using them mindlessly could contribute to an expensive, time-consuming mistake.

Blinding yourself to the rankings’ flaws leads to poor decisions. Consider this partial list of limitations:

1. They don’t measure exactly what’s important to you.
2. Overall rankings hide strengths (and weaknesses) in particular areas. Gem programs thrive outside “the top ten” or “top twenty.” Graduate students accomplish their goals and gain acceptance or have a better chance of obtaining financial aid when they recognize those gems.
3. Averages are exactly that. Average. They aren’t a cut-off and don’t reflect extenuating circumstances or the interplay between myriad factors in an admissions decision.  Applicants are accepted with below average stats and are rejected with above average stats.
4. Surveys, especially surveys of students and alumni (BusinessWeek, Financial Times, The Economist) can be gamed. Students and alumni know that higher rankings increase the value of their degrees and have an incentive to think kindly of their schools.
5. Survey respondents are not always well informed. They don’t necessarily know about recent developments and new programs at the schools they are ranking. They are opining based on what they experienced years ago or “heard.”
6. For those rankings that survey recruiters (BusinessWeek), realize that recruiters may value factors that you couldn’t care less about (Good service for recruiters, excellent MBAs willing to work for low pay, comfortable interview rooms).
7. The raw rankings don’t reveal the degree of difference between the different schools. While there could be a real difference in international or even national opportunity in a program ranked 25^th as opposed to 5^th. There is probably little difference in overall opportunity for a program ranked 8^th as opposed to 13^th.
8. ROI measures may reflect geographic differences or differences in starting salaries in particular industries more than educational quality.

Rankings are surveys spiced with data and frequently mirror commonly held beliefs about institutions. Reputation and brand can play a role in your application and acceptance decisions. They should never be the primary reason you apply or accept an offer of admission. After you research a school's strengths and weaknesses, educational approach, culture, admitted student profiles, and educational and professional opportunities, then you can consider brand.

So as you choose where to apply, mine the “rankings” that are not really rankings. Use the data to launch and supplement your qualitative and in-depth research about the schools. You will unearth the gems just right for you.

How should you use the rankings? For initial research and data mining. And maybe a little reputation checking if you are lucky enough to receive multiple acceptances.

First for that initial research: Let’s say you are looking into the schools you will apply to. You recognize that your academic qualifications are an important element in that decision so you want to know average test scores and GPA for the different schools.  That data is conveniently found in US News rankings . For MBA's, you can also find it at BusinessWeek and the Financial Times.

US News' rankings also allows you to rank or select programs by a limited set of criteria. For example, you can filter medical schools, business schools, and law schools by specialty, tuition, or class size.

MBA's have more options.  If you are concerned about return on investment, then the new BW ROI rankings are enlightening as well as The Financial Times’ and Forbes’. If you want to know what students thought of their MBA experience, turn to BW and The Economist/Which MBA. Perhaps you seek a ranking of European programs because you intend to study in Europe; The Financial Times provides a ranking of European schools.

Again, none of these rankings is a substitute for research, but they can be a launch pad.

In a nutshell, use the data in these databanks to help you rank programs according to your values, preferences, and criteria while taking into account your qualifications, goals, and personal preferences.

US News is publishing its much-watched, much-maligned annual ranking of graduate programs by April 23. I have developed several posts on rankings, what they are, what they aren't, and how to use them. I will post them over the next several days.

Ahh, those rankings. Hated by some. Relied on with religious zeal by others. Should you praise them? Should you damn them? Should you use them?

Yes to the last question…with a few caveats. To use them intelligently you need to understand what they are, and what they aren’t.

What are the published rankings?

They are surveys, collections of data, and convenient ways to compare schools on specific criteria – usually fairly superficial metrics. They measure different qualities: reputation, student stats upon acceptance, ROI, recruiter satisfaction, bar passage rates (for law school), and more. Consequently schools can be ranked with wildly differing results depending on the criteria used.

For example, Harvard Business School is ranked #1 by US News in March 2008, #2 by BusinessWeek in Oct 2008, #3 by The Financial Times in January 2009, and #50 out of 50 in BusinessWeek’s inaugural ROI rankings, also published in late 2008. The criteria count.

Realize that each ranking will give a different result because each one measures different factors. It is incumbent upon you, the intelligent consumer and ultimate investor in your graduate education, to understand the differences and the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.

When BusinessWeek's 2008 MBA rankings appeared, I was disappointed that BW had seemingly done away with its MBA specialty rankings. I am happy to report, that they reappeared last month in a slightly different format. 

Table: U.S. Schools Specialty Rankings

Table: Non-U.S. Schools Specialty Rankings

The good in this year's specialty rankings:

1. You can look at individual schools and see how recruiters have ranked them in specific areas.
2. You can also find the rankings for the specialties and see which schools have strengths in your areas of interest. 
3. BW ranked additional areas like Analytical Skills, Communications Skills, and Innovative Curriculum, 

The bad in this year's specialty rankings:

1. A few previously ranked specialties, like entrepreneurship and technology, are not included. 
2. BW ranks US schools and non-US schools separately, but did not provide an integrated ranking, which would be appreciated. It may not be possible because recruiters probably work either domestically or internationally. 

I, like MBA applicant blogger BizWiz, believe that the specialty rankings are in many ways more valuable than the overall ranking. If you're interested in, let's say, operations research, you should know that recruiters generally regard your target programs well. The program's strength in ... accounting may not be terribly relevant to you. 

At the same time don't take these rankings as absolute Gospel. Again, like BizWiz, I wouldn't pay too much attention to minor differences in rankings within a specialty. Use the data in the rankings and the overall information as a launching pad.  Specialty rankings can be a good place to start your research and are a terrible place to end it.