What makes a school a "quality MBA school"?

EssaySnark says, each of the rankings use different methodologies, which explains why different bschools end up in different places on each list. See this link for a brief discussion of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Un ... techniques

A bschool's reputation can be very different in different contexts. The "man on the street" might think that Yale, for example, or Princeton, would be great business schools -- however Yale usually doesn't rank all that terriibly high, and Princeton doesn't even have an MBA program. But both are well-known brand names based on the quality of the university and other factors. So you could say they have a strong "reputation", right? Other bschools, like Tuck or Haas or Sloan, are much less familiar names to most, though on The Street (Wall Street) these MBA brands carry some weight. Do most people even know that MIT has a bschool??

The other issue is geography. To some degree, recruiting is local. Unless McGill can get the prestigious employers up to Montreal, they can't offer the same outbound opportunities that another school can. Which means, even even if they had the best education in the world, most people would not want to go there unless they intended on staying in Montreal post-graduation.

But really, NONE OF THIS MATTERS in anyone's question for bschool. If you're targeting the most competitive jobs in the most competitive fields (IB, MBB), then you need to go to a school that feeds these. Otherwise, you should go to a school that you get excited about, where you feel like you fit into their culture, where they have classes and professors that will help you achieve your goals. Yes, you should go to the best school you can get into, sure, but what the 'best school" is, is different for each person.