My thoughts: I have to agree with Nikil's assessment of the rankings. While the rankings can be a benchmark in making a decision, I too believe it is quite subjective depending on what the applicant wants. While its nice to get a feel for the kind respect a particular school has garnered in each of the specialities, I personally would not make a decision based solely on the rankings that appear in some journal/news service.

Come on folks, let's hear what you have to say about this topic

VP_MBA_Guru wrote: Ultimately, your success in the MBA program and beyond is really dependent on you! Despite the rankings of your school, you need to work hard to network with classmates, reach out to alumni and utilize the resources of the career center to find your dream opportunity.

So look beyond a school’s overall ranking. Research the programs and make your ‘own’ rankings based on criteria that is relevant to you (I think ‘number of social functions’ was on my list!) Otherwise, you might overlook a program that could be well suited for your post-MBA goals.

Well I totally agree with Nikhil,its entirely about your own self,how you are gonna use the resources in the best possible way.Any B-School which ranks in top 10 doesnt necessary mean that your aims for persuing MBA will be satisfied by that School.
However your ambitions for MBA might just well be satisfied by a Buisness School which might not even features in the list

2008 BW Rankings (as of November 2008)

https://www.businessweek.com/bschools/rankings/

# Top 30 U.S. Programs
# 1 University of Chicago (Booth)
# 2 Harvard University
# 3 Northwestern University (Kellogg)
# 4 University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
# 5 University of Michigan (Ross)
# 6 Stanford University
# 7 Columbia University
# 8 Duke University (Fuqua)
# 9 MIT (Sloan)
# 10 UC Berkeley (Haas)
# 11 Cornell University (Johnson)
# 12 Dartmouth (Tuck)
# 13 NYU (Stern)
# 14 UCLA (Anderson)
# 15 Indiana University (Kelley)
# 16 University of Virginia (Darden)
# 17 UNC - Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler)
# 18 Southern Methodist (Cox)
# 19 Carnegie Mellon (Tepper)
# 20 University of Notre Dame (Mendoza)
# 21 Texas - Austin
# 22 Brigham Young (Marriott)
# 23 Emory University (Goizueta)
# 24 Yale University
# 25 University of Southern California (Marshall)
# 26 University of Maryland (Smith)
# 27 University of Washington (Foster)
# 28 Washington University (Olin)
# 29 Georgia Tech
# 30 Vanderbilt University (Owen)

What is "Second Tier U.S. Programs"? This is a classification on Business Week website. I am slightly confused here as one of the school I am targeting is under "Second Tier U.S. Programs" category.

Can someone help explain?

Financial Times published the new global b-school rankings today

https://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolra ... a-rankings

1 University of Pennsylvania: Wharton
1 London Business School
3 Harvard Business School
4 Columbia Business School
5 Insead
6 Stanford University GSB
6 IE Business School
8 Ceibs
9 MIT: Sloan
10 New York University: Stern
11 University of Chicago: Booth
12 Iese Business School
13 Dartmouth College: Tuck
14 IMD
15 Indian School of Business
16 Hong Kong UST Business School
17 University of Cambridge: Judge
18 Esade Business School
19 Yale School of Management
20 University of Oxford: Saïd
21 Northwestern University: Kellogg
22 Duke University: Fuqua
23 University of Michigan: Ross
24 Emory University: Goizueta
24 Nanyang Business School

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