Tag: rankings

Yesterday Bloomberg Businessweek 2016 Undergraduate Rankings announced their undergraduate business rankings, and we are disappointed in the outcome. The revised methodology for recruiter assessments and the removal of all academic quality measures resulted in significant volatility in the rankings with dramatic changes in this category not only for Olin, but also for peer schools such as Wharton, Cornell, and Emory. This will be the last Bloomberg Businessweek undergraduate ranking as they announced last Friday that they would cease producing them.

We are confident in the strength of our program and our students. Furthermore, we firmly believe that the undergraduate experience matters and that Olin strongly delivers on this. The data suggests that this confidence is well warranted.

Student quality:
– Olin is one of the most—if not the most—selective undergraduate business schools in the country.
– Our students are of the highest academic quality and have regularly led the country in top test scores
– Olin has historically been the top feeder school to the top 30 MBA programs

Program strength:
– Olin students, faculty, and staff have cultivated a culture of excellence.
– Olin BSBA student satisfaction as measured by Bloomberg Businessweek has been among the best in the country
– Olin students are taught by top faculty who are both top researchers and engaged in their students’ success

Outcomes:
– We have been among the most successful schools at placing students.
– Olin’s BSBA employment rate was 99% 90 days post-graduation for 2015 and has consistently been between 95–98%
– Olin’s starting median salary is among the highest in the country
– Every year, Olin students are recruited by a diverse group of elite firms across industries

These are factual data that document the strength of our program and students.

The Businessweek rankings can be found at here.

An additional analysis can be found here

We look forward to continuing to collaborate with our student body to advance Olin and ensure the BSBA Program remains one of the top programs in the nation.

The Poets & Quants ranking of best U.S. MBA programs has been revised and now places Olin Business School at #23, seven places higher than previously published in November 2015. (more…)

John Byrne created the first business school ranking at BusinessWeek magazine in 1988.  Now, as founder and editor of the Poets & Quants website, Byrne creates an annual ranking based on what he considers the five “most influential” surveys in the world. Byrne explains:

Unlike other rankings, the Poets&Quants composite list combines the latest five most influential business school rankings in the world: U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Financial Times, and The Economist. Instead of merely averaging the five, each ranking is separately weighted to account for our view of their authority. (U.S. News is given a weight of 35%, Forbes, 25%, while both the FT and Businessweek is given a 15% weight, and The Economist, 10% weight.)

Find out why Byrne invented business school rankings in our exclusive video.

Link to Byrne’s ranking of the rankings here.

Bloomberg Business released its Best Business Schools ranking based on a new survey process and remodeled methodology on October 6. The 2015 rankings place Olin’s Full-Time MBA program at #35 and the Professional MBA program at #14. The rankings last year were #26 and #21, respectively.

Our strengths are indisputable: Olin remains in the top five US schools in the important category of employment results with job placement at #2; and our alumni continue to report positive feedback on the ROI of the MBA degree. The low student ranking based on a survey of the class of 2015 was a key factor in the drop of the overall MBA ranking—a statistic that we will further analyze once more data is made available.

Changes to the 2015 rankings protocol include a survey of students immediately after graduation; additional alumni surveys; the elimination of faculty research output as a measurement; and changes in the percentage each component contributes to the final calculation of the rankings. With these changes, the Bloomberg ranking now incorporates several components similar to the US News & World Report Best Business Schools, which ranked Olin’s MBA program at #19 earlier this year.

Here is a breakdown of the new model for the ranking methodology:

Full-Time MBA Rankings are based on five components:

Part-Time MBA Rankings are based on two surveys:

The 2015 survey reflects the first major change to the Bloomberg Business rankings (formerly BusinessWeek) in more than 25 years. Bloomberg will provide schools with details of the data gathered in the surveys in the weeks ahead. We hope to glean from these results insights and trends that we may use to make our program even stronger in the future.

Link to Bloomberg Business Best Business School ranking.

The Financial Times published its 2015 annual ranking of Executive MBA programs Oct. 19. Olin’s program in partnership with Fudan University in Shanghai moved up one spot to #6 in the ranking of the top 100 programs worldwide.

“The ranking is based on a survey of business schools as well as their students who graduated in 2012.  The data measure how successful alumni have been in their career in terms of salary, seniority and achievements since graduating.”

This is the FT’s 100th ranking of business schools and, for the first time in its history, a mainland Chinese business school is ranked number one.

Link to the FT’s EMBA ranking.

Olin’s undergraduate program remains at #14 for the second consecutive year on the U.S. News ranking. The BSBA finance program is ranked #16 and marketing is #21. The undergraduate business school rankings are based solely on the judgments of deans and senior faculty at peer institutions gathered via a survey conducted in the spring.

U.S. News changed its methodology this year by using survey responses from the two most recent years instead of the current year only. In 2015, 37 percent of those surveyed responded. The rankings of the specialty areas such as finance and marketing are based solely on the spring 2015 survey and respondents are asked to nominate the 10 best programs in each business area. For a complete explanation of the undergraduate business programs methodology, click here.

U.S. News also released its survey of Best Colleges. Washington University in St. Louis was ranked #15 in the National University category. For the methodology used in this ranking, click here.