I'm confused about the BusinessWeek undergrad business school rank?

Question

Why do lower rank university grads can earn more salaries than the upper rank university grads? Also, what is the recruiter survey? Is it an important factor in job placement and such?

BW rank: http://bwnt.businessweek.com/bschools/undergraduate/08rankings/

Thanks--

Answer 1

I think that the BusinessWeek rankings are deeply flawed.  US News ranks MIT and Berkeley at #2 and #3 -- which is where they belong.  MIT has the top economics and finance departments in the world.  BW doesn't even have Berkeley in the top ten -- which is crazy.

At least they got Wharton right.

Regarding the recruiting discussion here, I know for a fact that Goldman Sachs only recruits at a small number of schools.  But three of them are Wharton, MIT and Berkeley.  I've had students at each of those schools get jobs at GS.

Many of the best B-Schools do not offer undergraduate degrees (e.g., Harvard, Duke, Chicago, Stanford, Dartmouth, etc) -- which probably also throws off the rankings.

Answer 2

Because there are a lot of other factors that go into it, as you can see.

But even so, if you scroll down to the bottom of the list, you see the salaries getting smaller and smaller--ending with a $38,125 salary at Iowa State, the lowest-ranked school on the list (compared with the $60,000 salary of Wharton grads, the highest ranked school.)

About the recruiter survey: Before determining the final ranking, we first had to review each school's response rates on the student and recruiter surveys. Of the 127 programs that were eligible for ranking, 12 were eliminated for low response rates in the student survey: Auburn University, Florida International University, Hofstra University, Loyola Marymount University, Pace University, St. Joseph's University, Texas Tech University, University of Cincinnati, University of Oklahoma, University of South Florida, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and Worcester Polytech Institute. Another 13 were cut for low response rates in the recruiter survey: Chapman University, Elon University, Georgia State University, Iona College, John Carroll University, Seattle University, State University of New York at Geneseo, University of Akron, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, University of the Pacific., Trinity University, Clarkson University, and Rutgers University at Newark. An additional six schools were eliminated due to low response rates on both surveys: Creighton University, Drake University, East Tennessee State University, Pacific Lutheran University, University of Tulsa, and Mercer University.

Um, no, the recruiter survey is just part of BusinessWeek's methodology in rating the schools.

And P.S.--Don't know what Babs is talking about re: recruiting at the top schools. The top firms (JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, etc.) recruit from the top schools very heavily. And even if they don't recruit, it totally doesn't matter (my boyfriend got an internship and then job at Lehman Bros. coming from a school where Lehman doesn't recruit.) Truth is--the better the school, the better chance you have to get the job. Period.

Answer 3

BW's survey is c**p. It doesn't fess up to the fact that most recruiters don't recruit at top B School's because they know they have no chance of getting their grads.