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Some thoughtful comments on business school rankings from Andrew Pollen, an ESADE MBA student, writing in the Economist:

“My school, ESADE, is dealing with the delicate situation of sliding 12 places in this year’s Financial Times ranking to number 33…..

The instinct is to treat rankings as what they are—spreadsheets that shoehorn very different schools into a common measuring standard. At ESADE, for instance, many students, including me, take the MBA in Spanish. The cohort on the full-time MBA is 180 and the degree can be completed in 12 months. Yet it is listed alongside schools which teach only in English, with intakes of close to 1,000 and programmes which last for two years. For this reason, rankings are limited to a small set of common indicators….

[Rankings] are a vital source of information for potential applicants, who often rely on them in place of an expensive campus visit. An admissions official casually mentioned to me that perhaps half of all business-school applicants rely solely on the rankings when deciding where to apply. A simultaneous fall in the main lists could, administrators admitted, cause applicants to disregard ESADE.”

For Andrew’s full column, visit the Economist.

Source: “MBA diary: Impact study,” Economist, by Andrew Pollen.

This article was originally published on Paul Bodine’s blog. Paul is a graduate admissions consultant with over 13 years of experience, having helped hundreds of applicants get into their dream business, law, medical, and graduate schools. He has also published several books on graduate admissions.