B-School Rankings released by all leading magazines

Nowadays, the best way to give a thrust to the circulation leading national magazines is to publish a survey which will rank the best employers, schools, colleges, engineering institutes, b-schools, actors, infulential people etc etc.

Apart from pushing up their circulation it becomes a very important marketing tool for the entities being ranked. So, these entities (Say B-schools for our discussion) fudge figures just to be ranked highly in the surveys. We, the students, go by these surveys as there are little other sources for us to make our decisions on which B-school to join. Our future hinges on such decisions. A mistake might be so costly, you might never realise the cost!

I want to know which ranking can be believed upon as a honest one. Every institute does its bit in pushing itself up. Either they have their own alumni as the chief-editor of the magazine or some such thing, but finally what we see is not the depiction of the true picture.

One may analyse the methodology to great detail and find out to what extent the ranking has tried to avoid bias. And one may also check if the methodology involves cross-verification of figures furnished by the B-schools. But is this enough? Does this ensure that the ranking is atleast close to reality?

I request all aspirants to closely examine the rankings and also check with insiders in the institutes (say students, profs etc). Seldom do they provide you access to the right figures, but you can atleast gain something from their unsure sentences.

The purpose of this post is to raise caution to every aspirant against believing the rankings completely. Please take them with a pinch of salt.

Any opinions, criticism, and comments or remarks are all welcome. Lets discuss and make the world a better place to live in.

hi

the guys who put any little importance tothese b-schools areb-schools diro ( that too shady ones as their revenue is impacted by it) and mba aspirants. i hv never heard any corporate to take these rankings seriously though 1-2 % deviation might be there

so about these rankings the less said the better

There are companies which are very famous and whose visit to B-school campuses make the B-schools proud. This decision of which campus to go to and which one not to go to, is decided by the HR dept. And they are answerable to their superiors.

Instead of wasting their time on a detailed analysis of B-schools they take recourse in such rankings and hence a part of the B-school placements is affected by these rankings. For eg,: If a HR head asks his executive why he chose a particular campus. The answer is very simple and doubtlessly argument-free - "So and so magazine has ranked them in the top 20 and hence I thought we should have it in our list too!"

Companies do take these rankings seriously. B-schools not participating in rankings are only of two kinds. One which doesnt need rankings to show that they exist in the market. Another, whose existence is not much of a help to the companies. So, please don't throw these rankings away to trash. That's what this debate is all about.

Are they authentic enough to demand so much of importance? [/b]