Business School Rankings

There are quite a few organizations that compile information and rank business and accounting schools. The Internet and your local library are the best immediate sources of finding helpful information. When using the Internet, you must be aware that many websites that you’ll find when you perform a “rankings” search are information databases that contain those universities that choose to associate with these sites. This is not a negative, just a caution to investigate multiple websites to get as much information as you can. In many cases, the information shown will be identical on a variety of websites, but at other sites, you may learn additional facts that help your evaluation.

Any source that provides business school rankings uses certain criteria for establishing its data. It is important that you become aware of the criteria used by each author. Some sources can be a bit “hazy” about their ranking criteria. Others are very public and open about their source of ranking criteria. For instance, one of the more popular Internet and print sources of rankings is The Princeton Review. While its primary focus is providing materials to help students pass entrance-related exams (SAT, GRE, GMAT, etc.), it also provides rankings based on a number of statistics, including student comments about academics, campus life and overall faculty comments.

All ranking information is subjective as there is no hard rule or data that can be used to evaluate business schools. There are, however, some that will be better for you than others because of your interests, future career plans, and type of education environment you desire. Get as much information as you can and, in the end, create your own business school ranking.