Thinking about a career in sustainable enterprise? Each year the Aspen Institute ranks MBA programs in their Beyond Grey Pinstripes edition on the schools’ ability to provide curriculum, research and careers while looking at the triple bottom line. This list continues to grow, but according to the 2010 rankings, candidates looking at MBA programs that…
How Business Schools Have Failed Business
Business school deans and educational thought leaders are doing a lot of soul-searching concerning the role and culpability of graduate business schools in the economic downturn. Dean Robert Bruner of Darden on April 5 wrote on Twitter “Controversy over the role of B-schools in the crisis. Did they warn strongly enough about the risks of toxic…
Rankings Awry
The now AWOL rankings “Top 50 Business Schools for Getting Hired” showcases the weaknesses and flaws in rankings, real and potential But first a little background: Last week CNN Money.com published Fortune magazine’s ranking of the “50 Best Business Schools for Getting Hired.” I chose not to blog it, because I had a lot of…
The Admissions Yield
As colleges and universities admit their freshman classes, they are trying to read your mind as to whether you are likely to attend. That’s right. To some, a measure of college prestige is the yield rate, or the percentage of students who accept an offer of admission to a particular institution. The higher the yield…
Stanford Wins First Place for Forbes’ “The Most Satisfied MBAs”
Forbes took its survey findings from “The Best Business Schools” and compiled a second rankings report: “The Most Satisfied MBAs.” Stanford won top slot for both rankings. It is #1 for providing the best return on investment for its graduates, as well as for churning out MBAs who are extremely satisfied with their current jobs…
Beyond Grey Pinstripes Ranking of MBA Programs
The Aspen Institute published last week its biannual ranking of MBA programs, “Beyond Grey Pinstripes.” This ranking ignores admissions criteria and abandons ROI. Through surveys of 149 participating schools, it attempts to rank the programs according to their “social impact management” or addressing of social, environmental or ethical topics. The goal: “spotlight innovative full-time MBA…
Rankings (Part 5 of 5): 8 Flaws in Rankings
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: They…
US News Grad Rankings Are Out!
The US News just released its 2009 Grad School Rankings. I’m going to list the top ten for business school, law school, and medical school (research) and provide links to the ranking methodology for each category. For other graduate specialties, please visit the US News site. Business School Rankings and methodology 1. Harvard2. Stanford3. Northwestern Kellogg…
How Should You Use Rankings? (Part 3 of 5)
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…
The Rankings (Part 2 of 5)
The rankings are not… The rankings are not objective measures of educational quality that apply across the board to all students. Nothing fits that bill. Educational quality is highly subjective, and experts debate it endlessly. Moreover, student objectives vary so “quality” differs from student to student. For example, a female student interested in strategy consulting…
HEC Tops in Marketing Outside US Per Princeton Review
Reuters reports: HEC in France has been voted the top business school outside the USA for the teaching of marketing by over 19,000 business school students in the latest survey by The Princeton Review. The school was one of only two non-US schools to feature in the complete ranking, which also covered subjects such as…
Best Public Interest Law Schools
In its latest edition, The National Jurist releases its rankings of the Best Law Schools for Public Interest Law. The National Jurist bases its rankings on three equally weighted categories: student involvement, curriculum, and financial factors. The top ten are: Northeastern University School of Law Loyola Law School in Los Angeles Lewis and Clark College…
Maclean’s Magazine Issues Latest Canadian Rankings
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Maclean’s released its 18th annual Canadian University Rankings aiming to provide essential information that will help students find undergraduate and graduate programs that will best suit their needs. Some interesting highlights: For the fourth consecutive year, McGill University was #1 in the medical-doctoral category. The University of Toronto…
First Ranking of Part-Time Law School Programs
Approximately 10% of all law school students attend part-time J.D. programs. Many attend part time programs due to financial constraints, which necessitate their working while pursuing their degree. Therefore, US News has decided to rank such programs, and give prospective law school students the ability to determine the strengths and weaknesses of specific part-time legal…
US News 2009 College Rankings
The much maligned, used, cursed, and pored over US News College rankings have been released for 2009. The Top 10 Universities are: Harvard Princeton Yale MIT (tied with Stanford) Stanford (tied w/ MIT) California Institute of Technology (tied with Penn). University of Pennsylvania (tied with CalTech). Columbia (tied with Duke and Chicago) Duke (tied with…
And Yet Another Opinion on Legal Job Market, the Rankings, and Law School
William D. Henderson is an associate professor at Indiana University School of Law — Bloomington and Andrew P. Morriss is the H. Ross and Helen Workman Professor of Law and Business at University of Illinois College of Law. They have also just published a study of law school graduate income, debt, and job opportunity at…
Law Admissions: Look at the job market
According to Law.com "All together, the top 20 law schools that NLJ 250 law firms relied on most to fill their first-year associate ranks sent 54.9 percent of their graduates to those firms, compared with 51.6 percent in 2006." Obviously that does not mean that the remaining 55.1 percent were all unemployed, but if you…
BW Interview with Stanford’s Derrick Bolton
BW has published an informative and lengthy interview with Stanford’s Director of Admissions Derrick Bolton. If you are a Stanford applicant either preparing for a R1 interview or drafting and editing your R2 essays, this really is a must-read. At the same time, while I strongly recommend this interview to Stanford applicants and find much…
Employment News for Grads
There have been a few fascinating articles this week focused on job opportunities for recent graduates of college and various graduate programs. Here is a brief run-down: "Best Places to Launch a Career" is a BusinessWeek Special Report surveying hiring trends for Generation Y and "ranking" the best employers. Included are pieces about the Big…
Colleges to Cease Cooperating with US News Rankings
The New York Times reports that the majority of colleges that comprise the Annapolis Group, a loose association of 80 liberal arts colleges, have agreed not to participate in the US News rankings. This non-binding commitment means that the deans of these schools, including Barnard, Sarah Lawrence, Gettysburg, and Kenyon will not respond to the…
