I've been doing a lot of research into MBA degrees in the US. I understand how important rankings are, especially those from publications like the Financial Times and other top ones.

However, I continue to run into the QS Global MBA Rankings, and I don't know what to make of them. I'm not targeting top schools like Harvard, Stanford and all those but I am more aiming at the schools that don't necessarily make it into the FT rankings. These are 'ranked' so to speak, but lack many of the data indicators that are present for the top schools. For instance, the data field 'Employability' which is obviously an important aspect, is missing from some of my target schools like Temple and Rutgers.

(Rutgers is ranked higher than Temple in this ranking)

Maybe I'm missing something but this ranking seems a bit strange in this sense. I guess I am looking for any ideas about how reliable or legitimate the QS ranking is.

[Edited by thegraperider on Apr 05, 2018]

Like Eduniversal, the QS method does not work well for international comparisons. As an EDHEC alum, I think the idea that it is better than Cornell or Dartmouth is just ridiculous.

Generic rankings might not suit your goal. Rutgers feels better than Temple to me, but for some goals it will be worse. Student quality matters, so many all you need to see is the average salary and the average GMAT.

My issues with the QS ranking are their methodology and the lack of transparency. The biggest factor for the ranking is 'employability' which is based on employer survey. It doesn't report how many employers it's surveyed, just that it's received a specific number of responses over a five year period. My sense is that many smaller employers are probably not reporting anything, or aren't asked to report anything, skewing the results in favor of larger, more well known employers, as well as larger, more well known schools. That's why there's weird ranges and other strangeness at the bottom of their rankings.

That's my sense, but there's no way to verify since they don't report this info.

And I do agree with Duncan that this doesn't really work for comparing international schools, even at the top of the ranking, where quality, transparent career data is easier to get.

Obviously they are better than nothing. Eduniversal is good for comparison.

I will check out Eduniversal. Average salary and GMAT are sometimes hard to find for schools, but I will keep scouting!

What schools are you looking at? I believe that both Temple and Rutgers publish both of these pieces of information on their websites.