American B-Schools Continue Domination In Economist MBA Rankings 2016

American Business Schools continued to maintain their dominance in the Economist Full Time MBA Rankings 2016 with 14 of them figuring in the top 20.

University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business held on to the number one position for the fifth successive year while Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management moved up to second rank from number 7 position in 2015.

University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business was placed 3rd, down one point from the second rank it held in the previous year. Harvard maintained its 4^th position as in 2015.

With the American schools capturing the first seven ranks, it was left to University of Navarra’s IESE Business School to occupy the 8^th rank followed by HEC School of Business, Paris and the University of Queensland Business School, Australia in the 9^th and 10^th ranks respectively.

Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad, the only one from India to figure in the rankings, dropped from 62 rank in 2015 to 92 this year.

Now in its 14^th year of publication of the rankings, Economist said, “Each year we ask students why they decided to take an MBA. Our ranking weights data according to what they say is important.”

The four categories covered are: opening new career opportunities (35% weighting), personal development and educational experience (35%), increasing salary (20%) and the potential to network (10%).

The Economist, which ranks MBA programs on 21 different criteria, however, warns, “Results of rankings can be volatile, so they should be treated with caution.”

“The various media rankings of MBA programmes all employ a different methodology. None are definitive, so our advice to prospective students is to understand the ethos behind each one before deciding whether what it is measuring is what is important for you,” it says.

Meanwhile, Switzerland’s International Institute of Management Development (IMD), ranked number one in the rankings in 2008 and then, over the next seven years saw a decline to end up at 32 in 2015 refused to part with data for this year’s ranking.

Economist said the school ranking has, therefore, been calculated using latest available data, other published sources and estimates. Thus, IMD was ranked 23 in the 2016 rankings.

IMD MBA program director Ralf Boscheck said the school did not participate because of serious flaws in the ranking and its methodology.

(Image Courtesy: The University of Chicago Booth School of Business)