In the latest episode of the Poets & Quants “Business Casual” podcast, John Byrne and Maria Wich-Vila, joined by guest Matt Simons, dive into the intriguing realm of the Princeton Review MBA rankings. While the rankings can be seen as quirky due to their lack of an overall best school and focus solely on U.S. institutions, they offer a unique lens with 18 different categories. Unlike traditional rankings, Princeton Review aims to capture the diversity of student experiences across 213 graduate business schools, with insights from 22,800 survey responses.

John expresses skepticism about the transparency and scope of the rankings, highlighting their U.S.-centric focus. However, he acknowledges their value in gauging student satisfaction, a metric often overlooked in other rankings. Matt echoes this sentiment and emphasizes the importance of understanding what each ranking aims to measure. He appreciates the large sample size and suggests that capturing student satisfaction has substantial value.

Maria, while critical of the limited number of schools per category, finds value in the rankings’ ability to cater to diverse student priorities. She appreciates that these rankings allow prospective MBA students to align their personal goals and needs with the strengths of different schools, making them a useful tool for applicants navigating the complex landscape of business education. Overall, the episode sheds light on the multifaceted nature of MBA rankings and encourages applicants to consider what truly matters to them in their educational journey.

Episode Transcript

Note: This transcript was generated by AI and may contain minor inaccuracies.

[00:00:06] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets & Quants. Welcome to business Casual, our weekly podcast. We have Matt Simons back again, filling in for Caroline Diarte Edwards, and of course, Maria Wigvilla, who is the founder of Application Lab. Matt, as you know, is my partner in Centerport, our admissions event, and also Hello, a veteran of the business school world who has had a hand in a lot of different things, including co founder of QS. But we won’t go there. Today, we’re going to go to the Princeton Review ranking. Now, I got to make an admission here. No great fan of the Princeton Review’s ranking system. I feel that it fails the test of transparency often. It’s US-centric, it’s not global, and it’s a little wacky, and I’ll tell you why. Because they don’t list an overall best school or best MBA program. Rather, they have 18 different categories in which they basically rank the top 10 and nothing else. But what does make this survey interesting, and it’s why we’ve begun to include it in a very small way in our composite ranking, is the fact that they do reach a lot of students.

[00:01:33] – John

In fact, in this latest ranking, 22,800 students completed their surveys across 213 graduate business schools. They basically ranked their schools on 18 different categories. You do find that there are certain schools that tend to perform well on this ranking. Uva’s Darden School does exceptionally well. They scored among the top 10 in 10 of the 18 categories. That was higher than any other school, though no different than its total last year. The Kellogg School led all MBA programs with 12 rankings among the top 10. Last year, but this year, Kellogg’s total fell to nine just below Darden. Then you had Stanford and University of Michigan’s Ross School, each claimed top 10 in eight categories. What do we think of this ranking? Matt, I’m going to turn to you because you’re probably going to have big issues with it because it only ranks US schools.

[00:02:41] – Matt

That wouldn’t be my issue. I think that there’s a broader problem when we say rankings and they’re intended to be this catch-all. I would love that some of the rankings, the label on the tin was more clear. Business Week has the voice of deans, US News has GMAT and test scores for selectivity. Forbes back in the day, it was all about ROI. We lost the Economist ranking along the way, and that similarly put a lot of emphasis on student satisfaction. I feel that in a world of Yelp and TripAdvisor, to be able to capture student satisfaction has a genuine substance. I actually don’t need to know which is the number one business school in the world. It feels that you’re almost setting up to fail. To broaden the categories, Tell us what it’s about, if it’s all about satisfaction. You know, John, that in the FT ranking, they have right at the end, the last column talks about satisfaction, and it’s scored out of 10, but has no weighting in the ranking. And yet it’s, I think, one of the most interesting indicators of the FT metrics. I also like the fact that it’s nearly 23,000 respondents.

[00:03:59] – Matt

There’s There’s another ranking that you have covered. What is it by CEO World? I don’t feel that I should be giving it too much disability and coverage that says something ambiguous, like we sent the survey to 50,000 people. Now, we all know response rates when you send out an email or a survey. If they were lucky, they got, what, 220 responses from which they decided who was number one and who was the number 10. So it’s great to see such a strong response rate. And I love the idea of candidates being able to look across these different categories where Darden and Georgia Tech and other schools can emerge. Vanderbilt would be another one for the broader school strengths. So a thumbs up from me.

[00:04:41] – John

Okay. Well, Maria, I know it’s a thumbs down from you.

[00:04:45] – Maria

What do you mean a thumbs down? I actually I do wish that they would go more than… I do wish that they would have more than 10 schools per category. So one of the critiques that we have always had about these rankings is that it’s a little bit insane in some way to try to say, Okay, what is the best business? Because the best business school is going to depend very much upon the individual student, their goals, their background, where they want to live, and so many different factors. And so I think that what I at least appreciate about the Princeton review is that they are trying to account for that. And so by dividing it up into these different categories, it really is helping students look at, Okay, what is my goal or what matters to me? Does the campus environment matter to me? If I have a family, does it matter to me that the rest of the community is welcoming for families? Whatever it might be. I really like that it really helps, I think, students with different goals and different values to try to figure out which school is best for them.

[00:05:47] – Maria

I also really do appreciate, as Matt pointed out, it does pull up some schools that I believe, really punch above their weight class. So there are a number of schools that I think usually get a raw deal when you look at the overall rankings, like the US news rankings. And when I get people who approach me and they’ll say something like, oh, I want to work in something like consulting. And I’ll say, well, have you thought about Ordon or Ta or Kellogg? And they’re like, but no, it has to be Harvard or Stanford. I’m like, It doesn’t have to be Harvard or Stanford. It can be there are many other schools that can get you. In fact, some other schools might even have a bit more of a focus in management consulting career preparation because more of the students that are interested in that as a career path. So I really like that this ranking is helping give the spotlight to various schools that might have different strengths.

[00:06:36] – John

Yeah. A good example is just to name one category in particular that I think is important, Classroom Experience. The number one school is Georgia Tech. We know they have a great MBA program. It’s small. It’s not ranked in the top 10 ever, but it’s highly admired and it’s done really well in rankings overall in recent years. Here it is, number one in classroom experience. Number two, Stanford, probably no surprise there. Kellogg, number three, NYU, number four. Number five is the Darden School, which typically ranks very high in this area. Michigan Ross, six. Then, let’s see, coming in at seven is a surprise, Arizona State. Washington University is eight. Number nine in Classroom Experience, UCLA, Anderson. Number 10, UNC, Kenan Flagler. They’re interesting mix of schools. Now, we don’t know, there’s no underlying index on any of these, so you don’t even know how close they are. Eleven could be as good as number one based on the index that we can’t see. Another really important category, I think, is how students view the professors. Number one and best professors, UVA Darden, which is no surprise. I’ve been doing or had been doing student satisfaction surveys back from 1988, and I can tell you that consistently Darden has showed up as having really the best MBA teaching faculty in the world, bar none.

[00:08:18] – John

Harvard, obviously, is up there given the approach that’s used to teach students with the case study, and so is Dartmouth Tuck. Then there are some surprises as Well, in this survey, among best professors, number 2 is the Cornell School, which is something of a surprise. Number 3, Washington University, the Olen Business School. Number 4, Carnegie Mellon. That’s a surprise to me. Number 5 is Indiana Kelly. That’s not a surprise because I know firsthand the dedication that those professors have to their students. Northwestern Kellogg, number Let’s see, number 7 is Michigan Ross. Number 8 is Notre Dame. That’s a surprise. Number 9, Vanderbilt. Number 10, William & Mary. You do get a different mix of schools based on these different categories. I think it’s fascinating. We don’t know also the response rates for each of the individual schools and how valid that might be. But nonetheless, it’s these are interesting categories and interesting results. Matt, what do you think of the categories? What they actually measure here?

[00:09:43] – Matt

So I’d love to come back to Indiana and possibly a lost opportunity. We talked earlier about whether it should be a US domestic or a global ranking, and can you compare apples and oranges? They’ve also looked at online programs, and I think it would be fascinating look at student satisfaction as you compare in-presence campus-based experiences versus online. We talk so much about online. You can study where you want and when you want. Are those students just as happy as their on-campus peers? But I think that there’s another story. In fact, I think it’s one of the biggest stories that Poets and Quants has written so far this year. It’s only July, and this is your wonderful editor, Mark, writing about the current concerns of the Stanford Gsb MBA students. There is genuine alarm about what they feel is an aging curriculum, the lack of access to professors who would rather be doing their research anywhere but in the MBA classroom. Now, Stanford I think, as you said earlier, they rate highly on the classroom experience. I think they are in the top 10 for at least five of the seven curriculum categories. And yet, and I know that this Princeton ranking, of course, is a snapshot of years gone by.

[00:11:04] – Matt

Today, I think the story that Poets has written about the concerns of students that are not equipping them with the skills for a world infused with AI It’s a huge story. How are business schools keeping up and ensuring that their curriculum is relevant? Obviously, a very talented and demanding bunch of students at Stanford, but I think this story could continue to run So in a sense, I think that the Princeton ranking in looking at the classroom experience and looking at the student experience is touching on something that might be ready to ignite, to use the Stanford word. And I think that this is something that you’ll be covering in the months to come. How are schools keeping up with what candidates feel that they need with the investment that they’ve made to be ready for the job market of tomorrow?

[00:11:55] – John

Very true. I mean, one aspect of that story, which is fascinating fascinating is students pointed out that they’re not even required to read case studies often because a professor will ask in advance of the class, who would like to talk? So there’s no pressure. I mean, that’s a ridiculous cold call. It’s hardly a cold call. And of course, there’s no grading curve as there is at Harvard, which is a much more demanding environment for MBA students. That classroom experience rating from Princeton Review may be reflective in some part on the fact that the programming isn’t as rigorous and you’re not put on the spot the way you are at Harvard and other business schools. Maria, would you think that’s true?

[00:12:49] – Maria

Yeah. You know that article, Stanford students complaining about some aspects of the curriculum. It was a little bit funny to me because I consider that to be, for the people who choose Stanford over other business schools, that’s a feature and not a bug. That’s what Stanford is about. It would be like complaining that the weather is too nice and the ski isn’t very good. Like, oh, I’m so mad that I went to Stanford. The snow global fights are terrible. It’s like, well, yeah, but what? Didn’t you research the school? I mean, Stanford, I think why it may have done well in the classroom environment ranking is because I think the students that go there appreciate the fact that it is a more relaxed academic setting. And a lot of the coursework, at least the most famous coursework, is very much focused on introspection, interpersonal skills, having people give you feedback on your interpersonal skills, et cetera, et cetera. And so it is what it is not. It is not a school where you have to do the reading and you have to go to class on time and you have to be in the class ready to go every day.

[00:13:58] – Maria

So it was a little bit interesting to me of these people complaining about that, because if that’s what you wanted, then you should have gone to Harvard or Chicago or Wharton. I can appreciate that. It’s funny because when I have people who are dual admits who get into GSB and another great program, GSB and Booth, GSB and Wharton, GSB and Harvard, they tend to choose GSB for many reasons, the main one being the Silicon Valley location. Let’s not fool ourselves. That’s 90% of the value of that program is like, wow, look at where you’re located. But when you look at the apples to apples or apples to orange’s comparison of curriculum versus curriculum, they like the fact that, oh, the thought of having to be in class at 8: 50 in the morning, five days a week, ready to go. That’s not what they’re looking for, explicitly not what they’re looking for. They’re balancing. If you think of what you get out of a business school as a pie, the slices of pie, the size of that slice of pie can vary. And they’re looking for other things in that pie. They’re looking for that very strict academic experience is not what they’re looking for.

[00:15:13] – Maria

So I thought that that article was a little bit interesting, and I think to tie it back to this Princeton review aspect of it, I think the people that choose to go to Stanford intentionally want that perhaps more relaxed environment. They see that as a benefit of the school and not as something negative, might explain the discrepancy between, on the one hand, you have some students complaining, and on the other hand, the survey from the Princeton review seems to have yielded some very positive results.

[00:15:39] – John

True. Yeah, I think that’s right on. I remember doing a piece on dual admits to Harvard and Stanford, which is really a unique privilege to be able to choose between those two MBA programs. And one anecdote that I gathered from a student who decided to go to Harvard was she to Stanford and did the typical thing, talked to students, sat in a classroom. The classroom that she was sent to, and mind you, this is admissions trying to show the school at its very best, the first three people in the classroom who were cold-called, passed because they hadn’t read the case study that day. She decided, You know what? I need the pressure and the discipline of a school that’s going to make sure that that I and everyone in this class is doing the work. She went to Harvard instead of Stanford, based on that very reason. I’m sure there are people who go there who say, You know what? I don’t want that pressure. It’s too much. I don’t want a grading curve, and I don’t want to deal with a situation where I’m going to be embarrassed in front of my colleagues in a classroom.

[00:16:55] – Matt

We’re talking about the most selective MBA on the planet. Of course, any of these top schools are all attracting remarkable individuals with a degree of self-confidence. We’ll keep it at that. We don’t want it to spill over into arrogance. And so the idea of passing, I could imagine her disappointment. But these are very self-aware, articulate individuals with a lot of accomplishments and experiences to the name. It’s quite remarkable that that should be such an issue. Now, when you look at yields, and some of my colleagues at Fortuna that used to work in Harvard admissions at the time of Chad Lossi, even going back to D. Leopold, yield was the single most important metric that the admissions office looked at. And if you remember, go Back five years ago, and certainly when Maria was applying to the school, the yield was routinely, what, 91%? And it’s slipped in the past five years. And what was it three years ago, that pivotal moment when Stanford’s yield was higher, and I I think it got even to 92 or 93 %. So admit weekends, what are you getting out of them? Or the questions that Maria will ask of her clients to really get them to think deeply, not just about the brand, but about the experience that they’re looking for.

[00:18:16] – Matt

So back to the Princeton review, hats off to them to breaking down all of these categories. Darden, you gave the example of the quality of the teaching. I think there are great signals, resources women, resources for minorities, all of these that can factor into one or two extraordinary successful or disappointing years of your life. So I think you’ve said in the past, if we just had one ranking, a monopoly, that would be a disaster. And of course, what you said in motion 37 years ago and actually having multiple rankings so that no one dominates. But again, for people to be clear about the rankings and what’s written on the label, do I really care what other deans think about the business schools? I like this one. This is student voices, and I feel that that’s central to the experience. They’re actually living those two years hands-on, and it’s great to be able to capture some of that.

[00:19:20] – John

In some of these results, I do say I have to question some of them myself. I mean, okay, so students are asked to, essentially, essentially grade the administration on how well the school is run. And this is a peculiar category, but number one is Cornell Johnson, which is interesting to me. Number two, to me, shockingly, is Harvard Business School. I know that it’s well run because the staff that Harvard’s attract is exceptional. I don’t think a whole a lot of its current leadership that really hasn’t achieved much of anything in the last few years and has been broiled in some controversies. Number three, in terms of administration, this industry, interest in Florida, which would be a surprise, I think, to many. Georgia Tech, four. Number five, UVA Darden. That’s an interesting category. You may agree or not agree with any of these things, but Nonetheless, it’s food for thought and discussion.

[00:20:34] – Matt

Do you find- I want to know, John, which business school has the most immaculate lawn? I think that Duke probably might be quite well on it or UNC. No doubt, Darden and maybe Harvard Business School. There is a category.

[00:20:46] – John

I know Harvard spends more on manicuring its lawn than any business school. In fact, I would guess any school in the world, there’s no school that spends more in gardening and fixing up the place than Harvard. No way.

[00:21:02] – Matt

Then here is my humble recommendation to the team. I would like them to spend a little bit of that budget on a sign of the school. There’s that one on, what is it, soldier field, whatever. And the candidates in their gowns or when they first show up, they say, I never thought this day would come, and they proudly post on LinkedIn and Instagram. This is a very visual generation. And I think that there should be at least an award for the school that has the best school sign that generates the best stuff, because those pictures go around the world. They talk to your peers, your friends, your former colleagues, and family. And I don’t think Harvard has got the best school sign. It’s iconic, but it could be improved.

[00:21:47] – John

Well, they may have the most iconic building, Baker Library, which you got to give them that. That’s a beautiful building. Yeah, beautiful. Right, Maria?

[00:21:58] – Maria

You said a lot of It’s a huge campus. Yeah. Well, it was under construction. It was under renovation when I was there. I was under renovation for exactly two years, and those were the two years that I was there. It also meant that the tunnels were closed, by the way, the two years that I was there, which was a real bummer because in those Boston winters, I sure would have liked to have those tunnels to go from building to building. Just super quick, though, just in terms of the Harvard landscaping budget, it’s also one of the only business schools that has its own separate campus. It’s not a couple of buildings on an existing campus. It is a separate, it is a large campus with dorm building. So I don’t know, maybe there could be some metric that would measure that total landscaping budget against how much there is to landscape. Because some of the other schools are just like a building. But going to other Princeton review lists that I thought was really interesting was their list for entrepreneurship. And so what What I really liked about this is it aligned with, again, some of these results that I’ve had a strong intuition about, and I tell applicants about it, and sometimes they believe me, and sometimes they don’t.

[00:23:11] – Maria

I’m thrilled to see that Princeton Review is giving some of these schools that are due. In the entrepreneurship list, UCLA was number two, and Ross was number three, and Babson was number five. Ucla, for example, they have something called the business creation capstone, which is in your second year, you can actually launch your own business while you’re in school and you get the full support of professors. They have modeled it off of some of these more famous incubator type, Y-combinator types of things. They have modeled it off of that, and that has gotten huge positive word of mouth. Similarly, the Ross experiences an action-based learning. Ross is a very hands-on school, and the real. Start where you can get Similarly, you get to start your own business. And obviously, Babson, I have such a tender place in my heart for Babson. Pretty much all they do is entrepreneurship, but they’re so good at it and often get overlooked in the overall rankings because of that. And so I personally, of all the prints and review sub-rankings that I looked at, this one was just… I loved it. I was very thrilled to see it.

[00:24:28] – John

Yeah, very It’s true. So if you want to check it out, look for it at Poets and Quats. It’s called MBA Rankings: Best Business Schools for Career’s Culture and Curriculum. You’ll see how each school scores in the top 10 in every one of the 18 categories. Then what we do is we do a rankings in the top 10, which show you the schools that landed in these different lists the most. Intriguing stuff. Anyway, check it out. Again, with a big grain of salt on every single ranking, the results are often a function of what the methodology is. You need to get under the hood, understand what’s trying to be measured, and sometimes what’s most important can’t be measured. So bear that in mind. This is John Burn with Poets & Quants. Thanks for listening.