I found this great resource on the AACSB website that provides a look into the criteria behind several MBA and Business school rankings. It's an attachment to this lesson so feel free to download!
Media Rankings of Business Schools ...
Media rankings are
conducted by t
he editorial staff
of various newspapers and magazines. Generally, these rankings
involve a combination of data collected from student alumni
surveys, recruiter surveys, dean and director surveys, and schools.
This data is then weighted to determine a system for ranking
universities and programs.
The methodology that these rankings use to calculate their top schools has become a major concern in the business education community. For instance, some rankings depend highly on the opinions of deans and administrators from other schools. The concern here is that these opinions may be made with the person's own interests in mind and be based on limited known information about the school being reviewed.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are school or media rankings?
Media rankings are conducted by the editorial staff of newspapers and magazines. Although the methodology may vary depending on the publication, they generally involve some combination of data collected from student/alumni surveys, recruiter surveys, dean/director surveys, and data supplied by schools. The data collected from these surveys are weighted to determine an ordinal ranking of programs.
Is it important to attend a highly ranked business school?
What is most important is to select programs that fit best with your goals regardless of the rank attributed to a program by any publication. If you do decide to take a look at the media rankings, be sure you review a ranking system that measures things that are important to your decision.
What is the relationship between AACSB accreditation and the rankings?
The relationship depends on the particular media ranking and other factors, such as geography. In the U.S., programs usually must be delivered by an AACSB-accredited institution to be included in rankings. Outside the U.S., a larger than ever number of ranking systems are requiring that schools be AACSB-accredited or accredited by another locally held accreditation body. It is important to note that AACSB accreditation reviews include all the business and management programs of an institution, not just the MBA programs that are usually the focus of media rankings. Also, accreditation is much more complete in that it examines the mission, strategy, students, faculty, staff, curriculum, and educational outcomes through a comprehensive peer review process. This is in contrast to the media rankings focus of collecting opinions about programs.
What does it mean if a program drops in the rankings?
You must understand the methodology to know why a program's rank drops. Media organizations generally do not publish the raw data used to tabulate ranks, but will sometimes interpret the information to offer explanations for changes. Note that major changes in the rank of program should be viewed with skepticism simply because quality normally does not change drastically over a short period of time. Therefore, a drop in media rankings does not imply that a program has diminished in quality. It could be the result of many other reasons that do not reflect the overall quality of the program. A school could drop in its ranking from a particular publication simply because the scores of other schools improved in some directions or the variables were weighted in a different manner. This doesn't necessarily mean the school's overall quality has dropped.
Source: http://www.aacsb.edu/Students/masters/rankings.html
