Rankings Dissected

Hey all,
Wish to share with you the version of rankings I find the most appropriate.......

I sincerely believe that schools cant be ranked since majority of them have such unique specialities that comparing them seems apples and oranges...... But still for simplification of choice (on where to apply, makes sense on the $s and the effort to apply to handful of schools.... and blah blah blah...... How many times have this been said on the net) I am a huge rankings fan........

All magazines have their own method of producing rankings....... But all of them have the same weakness........ they follow a set method....... I mean, look at WSJ for example (I Love To Dump This Ranking)...... it's methodology involves taking views of corporate honchos........ But since it adheres to this method, it is forced to put THE Harvard at 14 and THE Stanford at 18!!!!!

Similarly, Look at Forbes rankings, it takes majorly into account the ROI (return on investment) And so, This method forces it to put Tuck on #1 ignoring programs which may be much better but have a much wealthier intake.......

I believe I've made my point on the absolute ranking system....... Now lets come to the cluster classification of schools....... While this sort of classification is much more sensible and true to the real picture, it has far too many schools in each cluster for it to be of any gr8 use (This is my personal view...... since it was not very beneficial to me...... just gave me an idea of who-is-where)

Then I found a guy JayMaven, who produced a rankings system called the Felt Sense Rankings. After reading his rankings, I felt that the shortcomings of both the absolute rankings system and cluster sytem is removed....... You should take a look at the whole article HERE..... Copy Pasting the relevant rankings for lazy folks like me :P..........

Here, are my “felt sense” rankings:

1-2. Harvard and Stanford

3. Penn (Wharton)

4-6. Chicago, Northwestern (Kellogg), MIT (Sloan)(Any of these 6 can be considered “Top 5”)

7-9. Columbia, Berkeley (Haas) and Dartmouth (Tuck)(Columbia and the previous 6 form the so-called “Magnificent 7,” or “M7.” It is often theorized that the Deans of these schools conspire to keep their schools at the top, and this group has become a kind of de facto “Ivy League” of B-schools. However, Columbia is commonly seen as the 7th of the M7, and has fallen below Tuck and Haas in this year’s US News Rankings.)

10-16. Michigan (Ross), NYU (Stern), Duke (Fuqua), Virginia (Darden), UCLA (Anderson), Yale SOM, Cornell (Johnson)(Any of these 16 can be considered “Top 15,” and I would say any of the top 9 plus Ross, Stern, and Fuqua could make legitimate claims at “Top 10.” Anderson is the oddball here, since it came in at #10 in the 2007 US News Rankings but dropped all the way to #16 for 2008.

17-22. UNC (Kenan-Flagler), Carnegie-Mellon (Tepper), Texas (McCombs), Emory (Goizueta), USC (Marshall), Indiana (Kelley)(Any of these 22 can make claims at “Top 20.” USC has traditionally been lower, but seems to have risen in the rankings.)


I find this ranking to be a marriage between the cluster system and absolute ranking methdology........ gave me fair idea of the starting point on shortlisting schools.
Hope these rankings help in some way....... Peace