What Makes the Best B-Schools

In this online chat, BusinessWeek editors talk about how they go about drawing up the MBA rankings, and what's new in 2006

The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, winning praise for recent reforms and reconstruction, snagged the top spot for the first time ever, when BusinessWeek announced the results of the 2006 MBA rankings on Oct. 12 (see BusinessWeek.com, 10/12/06, "2006 Best B-Schools").

That wasn't the only surprise. BusinessWeek research disclosed that starting salaries for MBAs are on the rise, and that students can get a quicker return on investment by choosing a mid-tier program as opposed to one in the top five.

In a recent live chat event, BusinessWeek Associate Editor Louis Lavelle (LouisBW) and Staff Editor Geoff Gloeckler (GeoffBW) shared the list of best B-schools, discussed methodology, and offered advice when fielding questions from an audience of over 1,000 chatters.

BusinessWeek.com B-schools community manager and reporter Francesca Di Meglio (FrancescaBW) moderated the chat. Here's an edited transcript.

FrancescaBW: Louis and Geoff, perhaps we should start with having you explain a little bit about the methodology for the 2006 rankings.

LouisBW: Our methodology is made up of three parts. As many of you know, we conduct a survey of graduates. This year, we surveyed 16,000 students, and 9,000 answered. We combine the 2006 survey with past surveys conducted in 2004 and 2002.

Combined, the student surveys count for 45% of the ranking. The second part of our methodology is a survey of corporate recruiters. This year, we surveyed 426 recruiters, and more than 200 responded. The recruiter survey from 2006 is combined with those from 2004 and 2002, and together they account for 45% of the final ranking. The last 10% comes from our analysis of intellectual capital, which is based on journal articles written by faculty members.

GeoffBW: The response rates for both the students and recruiter surveys this year were comparable to the past few years, with about 56% on the student side and 52% on the recruiter side. We were quite pleased with both, I think.

LouisBW: Also, combining three recruiter surveys is new. In the past, we based our recruiter score on just one survey. This year, it's based on three, similar to the student surveys.

libero08: Have the proliferation of other publication rankings affected your results or methodologies? Have they affected the responses you get from your subjects?

LouisBW: The proliferation of rankings, since BusinessWeek launched the first one in 1988, has made it difficult to get the high response rates we want, especially from recruiters. But we've managed to get pretty decent response rates from them for each of the last three rankings—upwards of 50%.

mlh97: For the schools that moved the most (up or down the rankings), can you give the primary reasons for the change?

LouisBW: The school that moved up the most in the ranking was the Haas School at University of California at Berkeley. There were multiple reasons. For one thing, recruiters were seriously impressed with the quality of the grads. One told me that the school has "very strong entrepreneurial innovative" students. But it didn't end there. Career services at Haas made a lot of improvements. They work with recruiters to find them the best grads, and they treat them like royalty when they come to campus.

Antoine: Did you get any insight about the way American B-schools were considered in Europe vs. INSEAD/London Business School?

GeoffBW: This is a good question. A trend that's beginning to show its face is that more students are looking to schools in Europe for an MBA, where in the past, they were looking to the U.S. The main reason for this is the cultural aspect that so many schools, like INSEAD and IESE, are able to offer.