One thing that is blindingly obvious once you start researching MBA schools is the enormous amount of information that is now available. And beyond that, how many places have set themselves up as judge and jury to assign a number to each school and leave the dean sputtering as he tries to explain it.
So, for fun, I thought I would go find the official rankings on the three schools that I have decided to apply to. I found five US-only rankings and 2 global rankings, with the interesting twist that Michigan decided not to participate in one of them (Forbes). I then proved what a spreadsheet geek I am and averaged the US rankings and all the rankings. I also included a ranking by GMAT score and did a US average including this number.
Here is my resulting table:
| Columbia | Berkeley/Haas | Michigan/Ross | |
| US Rankings | — | — | — |
| Business Week | 10 | 8 | 5 |
| US News | 9 | 8 | 11 |
| Forbes | 6 | 13 | n/a |
| Wall Street Journal | 3 | 2 | 7 |
| Fortune | 6 | 12 | 11 |
| GMAT Score | 4 | 5 | 14 |
| Global Rankings | — | — | — |
| Financial Times | 2 | 19 | 25 |
| Economist | 12 | 10 | 9 |
| Ranking Averages | — | — | — |
| Average US Ranking | 6.333 | 8.000 | 9.600 |
| Average US w/o GMAT | 6.800 | 8.600 | 8.500 |
| Average Overall Ranking | 6.500 | 9.625 | 10.250 |
| — | — | — |
I thought that this was a very interesting way to look at the numbers. It takes the single methodology bias out to some degree and the averages seem to match with my intuition on where the schools sit in relation to one another.
By the way, if you are interested in ranking methodology you should check out UNC’s page that goes through some of the major players.
