Friday, November 2, 2007

What Has Changed in the MBA World

Financial Times has posted the annual MBA ranking. Being the most international ranking there is, I used this ranking a lot when deciding which program to attend.
http://rankings.ft.com/global-mba-rankings

Global Perspective
Top 10 USA schools according to this ranking (place last year in the brackets)
1. Wharton (1)
2. Columbia (4) - surprised here?
3. Stanford (3)
3. Harvard (2)
6. Chicago GSB (6)
8. NYU Stern (7)
9. Tuck (8)
10. Yale (11)
14. MIT Sloan (10)
17. UCLA Anderson (19)

Top 10 European Schools
5. LBS, UK (5)
7. INSEAD, France/Singapore (8)
11. IE Business School, Spain (-)
13. IMD, Switzerland (14)
15. Cambridge Judge, UK (35)
16. IESE, Spain (13)
18. HEC Paris, France (22)
19. Oxford Said, UK (20)
22. Manchester Business School, UK (22)
24. Esade, Spain

An up trend for European school. Also important is Ceibs from China #11 this year.

Personal Perspective
INSEAD is ranked 7th in the world, up from #8 last year. MIT Sloan - the other business school I was admitted to is down - #14 this year, a fall from #10 last year. Did I do the right decision here? It seems so.

My third business school was Oxford - up 1 place in #19 in the world. Cambridge (the strong competition) is #15.

I was on the waitlist of London Business School, still at #5 and the best European school according to this ranking. But it is not that clear that it is a better choice than INSEAD as I will show next.

INSEAD - A Further Look
Ok, so INSEAD is up to #7. What other things can we tell from this ranking?
Employment
Weighted Salary for INSEAD students is 140K$. 2nd in Europe - IMD is first with 153K$. LBS only third with 135K$. Oxford is not legging behind with 128K$.
Top salaries are for graduates from Stanford (168K$), Cape Town (What? 163K$), Wharton (160K$), and HBS (157K$).

Salary Increase - For LBS it's 122%, INSEAD only 94% (poor us).
You wanna get an increase? Go to Ceibs (159%), Yale (151%), or IE (149%).

Will you get a job after the MBA? According to FT you have a chance of 90% if you graduate from INSEAD - pretty low comparing to all the others. LBS is 96%.

School
INSEAD is the #6 international school. LBS is only 10. The other top 10 schools are no where to be seen. Do you want an international perspective? Come to INSEAD.

Value for money - INSEAD is the 2nd school among the Top 20 schools, only IMD is above. Oxford not too far behind. LBS is one of the most expensive schools and the worst in the world in that category. Being a one year program pays off.

Reputation - Alumni were asked to rate the schools based on whether they will recruit MBAs from that school. LBS is #5 and INSEAD #6. This is a pretty important category so here is the top 10:
1. Wharton
2. HBS
3. Stanford
4. Kellogg
5. LBS
6. INSEAD
7. Chicago GSB
8. Columbia
9. MIT Sloan
10. Ross
Next 10: NYU, Tuck, Duke, Darden, UCLA, Berkeley, IMD, Toronto, Iese, Kenan-Flagler.

Is this the true ranking? From inspecting the results it might as well be. The American schools are sorted pretty much as I would expect, and also the European schools. Less surprising than the real FT ranking.

Summary
It seems that INSEAD is a top 10 school again this year in all categories, an excellent value for money, with great employment future and an international exposure.

Last, I did my own ranking based on the criteria I find most important (I know that's weird but it made sense to me): Alumni recommendation-reputation (30%), salary(30%), chance of employment(10%), international(10%) and value(20%).

Here are the results:
1. INSEAD
2. IMD
3. MIT Sloan
4. Wharton
5. Kellogg
6. LBS
7. Cranfield (Uk)
8. HBS
9. Stanford
10. Tuck
11. Oxford
12. UCLA
13. Capetown (South Africa)
14. Chicago GSB
15. Ceibs (China)
16. Columbia
17. IE (Spain)
18. Erasmus (Netherland)
19. Iese
20. North Carolina

Told you that INSEAD is number 1 :) .

(I swear that I did not arrange it so INSEAD would be #1. I just picked the most important criteria and put it in Excel. Amazingly INSEAD is the best pick.)

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can you explain me something?
I have been seeing these rankings(the ones with INSEAD at #7 and LBS at #5) for some months. Why are you telling that they are releases now???

Yariv Hammer said...

I was under the impression that this is a new ranking.
Regardless of when the ranking was published my analysis is still valid and standing for 2007 ranking. In my blog it is suitible to have a post about this ranking.
Sorry for the confusion.
You can expect me to post a new one for 2008 rankings as well...

Unknown said...

Pretty good analysis. I would add one more criteria, that no ranking, not even yours considers. Well it is hard to find information on this, maybe thats why.

Post- MBA employment for students, who are not sponsored participants.

INSEAD, LBS etc have a lot of sponsored candidates and hence great salaries + value for them. Considering they have a job waiting for them and no fees, quite a good deal.

But looking from a non-sponsored participants perspective, things are different. There should be a quantative analysis on that as well.

Unknown said...

Pretty good analysis. I would add one more criteria, that no ranking, not even yours considers. Well it is hard to find information on this, maybe thats why.

Post- MBA employment for students, who are not sponsored participants.

INSEAD, LBS etc have a lot of sponsored candidates and hence great salaries + value for them. Considering they have a job waiting for them and no fees, quite a good deal.

But looking from a non-sponsored participants perspective, things are different. There should be a quantative analysis on that as well.

Yariv Hammer said...

Sure, but this information is not available (at least not to me). I only analyzed FT rankings.
BTW - I will analyze the 2008 rankings soon.

Unknown said...

Hello Yariv,

I need some advice from you on the EU MBA programs.As you know, I had applied to INSEAD's program in R3 starting in Jan 2008 and was in waitlist for 4 months but could not make it through.
Thereafter, I applied to IESE, Oxford, LBS and I have an offer from IESE and Oxford and an interview invite from LBS. My career ambitions :(Entrepreneur in Hi-Tech; Biz Strategy Role in hi-tech/ Strategy consulting in short term).

I would like to know your views on these schools as you have much more experience and have been through the process. Moreover you have a similar background. (Technology)

In terms of statistics, I found that in Said only 34 % got placed through their career cell which is not a good sign. IESE has much better career placement cell but it s an expensive program and essentially is a second tier program (as Oxford).

I will be grateful to you for your advice.

Best Regards

Anonymous said...

LBS higher salary increase than INSEAD: Pretty misleading. Students at INSEAD are generally more experience (thus better paid - and also potentially higher quality of people). LBS is simply starting with lower base so it is easier to achieve higher salary increase. Salary after MBA is higher at INSEAD, that is what I would consider.

Thanks a lot for briliant overview!

Alex Tzukerman said...

Hi Yariv,
I'm future LBS student, and having read your post I was wondering... How can a one year program offer the same value like a two year program? Are these two types of programs analogous at all?

Yariv Hammer said...

Hi Alex,
That's actually a great question.
Congratulations on being admitted to LBS. I've previousely visited the school and it is a great place to do your MBA.

The length of the program defines the environment and nature of student life, academics and career search. LBS is a 15-18 months program, and INSEAD is a 10-12 months program. INSEAD divides the period to 5 semesters (or periods as we call them). Each of them are very busy, but we study all the topics that are covered in any other business school, with greater emphasise on business strategy, international management and entrepreneurship. Of course marketing and finance are covered in details.
Regarding internship, it is only available to the class that starts in January, while it is whithin the program of LBS.

To summarize, INSEAD covers all topics that are taught in any other business school. There is a great difference between a one year and two years programs, but not in the curriculum.

I will be happy to answer any further quaetions.

Yariv
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Please visit my new website
www.hmr.co.il/mba

Alex Tzukerman said...

Yariv, thanks for the answer. Are you talking about topics comparison or actual courses curriculum comparison side-by-side? I was just thinking that it probably depends on the audience. If a person has a decent business acumen and needs a shorter version of the MBA - one year program would be the best for him or her. However, for someone who comes from outside the business world (like high-tech engineers), a two year program is much more suitable to really get the taste and make the change in the state of mind.

Yariv Hammer said...

Alex, even if you look at courses one by one, you will see great resemblance. LBS is much more focused on finance though.
I am an engineer who didn't come from business world (as you defined it), and INSEAD was no shorter version for me. They manage to teach you everything, in full and in detail, in 10 months due to the structure of the program. Pace is indeed fast, which might not be suitable for everyone, but INSEAD is not an executive summary of an MBA.
BTW, our corporate finance professor told us that he had taught us in two months what is tought in several courses in other programs - and trust me his course was very profound.

Yariv
-----------
Please visit my new website
www.hmr.co.il/mba

Glass said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Yariv Hammer said...

Of course this analysis is relevant to the 2007 rankings. There is a review of the 2009 rankings in my blog:
http://my-mba-blog.blogspot.com/2009/04/my-thoughts-on-new-mba-rankings-2009.html

Also you can find the entire rankings on my new website:
http://www.impactmba.com/rankings.htm