Thoughts on MBA rankings

There are numerous MBA rankings. The most famous ones are US News, Business Week, Financial Times and Frobes. None of them, however, reflects the reality from an international perspective. Referring back to my one of my previous posts – an MBA is very American and things Americans treat as obvious are far from being obvious to Internationals.

Let's take Wharton. Americans treat Wharton as "one of the three". Internationals don't really know Wharton. Kellogg is another perfect example. Non-American students pursuing their undergraduate degrees at universities across Europe, Africa or Asia rarely recognize Kellogg as a top-notch business school and rather know it as a cereals brand. Chicago seems to follow the pattern. Go to European (or any other) universities and ask what Chicago is famous for. Most probably, you will hear Chicago Bulls or E.R. and not Chicago Booth. The bottom line: many international candidates had no clue what good b-schools are till they started preparing applications (i.e. looking into rankings). For American students it may sound astonishing, but they forget that they have been hearing Wharton, Kellogg, Chicago names since they were crawling on all fours.

I did hear about Wharton but didn't know that it has such a good MBA program. Now you might say that it's not about Joe Doe knowing about Wharton, but about recruiters at McKinsey or Goldman to know how good Wharton is. But that's only partially true.

Firstly: It's wrong to assume you'll be working only "with knowledgeable" people. At some point you might be making a deal with somebody who doesn't have a clue about MBA. Or you might be setting up your own business in your country of origin where MBA is another foreign word. If that's the case then Wharton will not be of much help.

Secondly: MBA is as much about "wow" factor as about MBA itself. Wharton will not wow majority of people. Not because it's not good but because it's not known. And so on...