Every year applicants obsess over rankings of MBA programs that are published by the Financial Times, Business Week, U.S. News & World Report, EIU, and Wall Street Journal. The reason why rankings are important is that a business school’s quality is very much driven by the caliber of its students. Working backgrounds, the caliber of students is driven by where top candidates flock to, and where top candidates flock to is very much driven by which schools they perceive to be the most prestigious (unfortunate, but a reality). Of all the various publications that provide rankings of MBA programs, U.S. News & World Report best reflects the general perception of prestige and therefore consumer preference. As a result, while you shouldn’t let rankings singularly drive your decisions about which schools to apply to, you most certainly shouldn’t ignore them either.
Looking forward, imagine you chose to go to a top 30 school for whatever reason, over a top 10 school. It doesn’t really matter if your program was more rigorous or perhaps prepared you better academically than the top 10 school would have, what matters is that when you’re back in the workforce, people’s first impression of your ability will often be driven by the school you went to. Even though you might know that your program for your particular field was excellent, their impression will be driven by the general perception of your school, which if you’re still unsure of, is probably best reflected in the U.S. News’ rankings of MBA programs. And again, higher ranked schools attract higher caliber students. Higher caliber students mean a better network for you. How can rankings of MBA programs ever be ignored?
Okay, this post has been incredibly elitist so far. There are of course cases in which you should choose a lower ranked school over a higher ranked school. For example, MIT Sloan is often ranked in the 4th or 5th spot in the Rankings of MBA programs issued by U.S. News. But if you are sure that you want to be an operations expert running cutting edge global factories, then you should absolutely go to MIT Sloan, and turn down HBS, Stanford and Wharton. MIT will unquestionably better prepare you for an operations career than other higher ranked schools. Similarly, if you absolutely know you want to work at a highly quantitative hedge fund doing all kinds of complicated math stuff (and your undergrad education hasn’t already prepared you for it), then definitely consider Chicago, MIT or Wharton over HBS and Stanford for their incredible finance programs. If you are unsure about what you’d like to do for your career in the long-term, then my advice is to rely on the rankings to some degree. If it’s a choice between number 4 and number 8 school, and you really like the culture of the number 8 school, no big deal, go with number 8. But if you’re choosing between a top 15 school and a top 3 school, and are unsure about career goals, go with the top 3 school because the top 3 school will open the most doors for you in the long run.
Rankings of MBA programs exist regardless of whether we like them or not. Unfortunately, for business schools, they are even more important (than in other fields) because success in business is so dependent on access, networks, and relationships (which again, are very much correlated with school rankings).