The web is the best collection of human understanding/knowledge. And since Google can find related websites, I decided to see how Google and thus, everybody, thought business schools related to each other. The findings revealed a mix of rankings, geography, and other insights. So let's get to it...
Methodology
On Feb 13, 2011, I Googled [related:<b-school website>] for the world's top b-schools, and noted the order in which other b-school websites showed up in the top 20 Google results. Only b-school homepages were noted; I did not include University homepages, duplicates, Wikipedia articles, or other pages. The results may have been personalized according to Google's algorithms.
Relatedness Results
Analysis
The rankings relationship comes through. For the "top six" schools, the first three results are a closed set: HBS, Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, Booth, and Sloan all have a "top six" as their top three results without exception. We can even expand that trend to the top five results, and only four of 30 results are not "top six," with appearances by Haas (2), Columbia (1), and Stern (1).
Interestingly, for the excellent U.S. schools of Stern, Columbia, Haas, Yale, Fuqua, and Tuck, the relationship with "top six" schools is almost nonexistent in the top three results. Instead, the geography dominates, which explains the appearance of UC Davis and CUNY Baruch.
The European schools of LBS, INSEAD and IESE have rankings that are a mix of location and reputation. The geographic distance between the U.S. and Europe is clearly reflected in the fact that no U.S. schools are in their top three results. The relevance results for Asian b-schools (not shown) are nearly exclusively Asian b-schools, with no appearances by U.S. or European schools. It makes me wonder how much of the relevance disparity is a reflection of applicant location vs. quality vs. language vs. value of MBAs.
In the 192 relevance results, there are appearances by Darden, Fuqua, and Anderson but not a single mention of Ross! It's quite surprising, considering the ranking similar to those three schools, and the physical distance from Kellogg/Booth should also help. Anecdotally I know many people here at Kellogg who were deciding between Kellogg and Ross. Could this mean bad things for Ross?
"Google Rankings" Ideas
If we take HBS as the gold standard, we could simply rank schools by relevance to HBS. But we would still encounter location bias. Putting Boston U as #9 doesn't seem right.
If we go by the idea that school are defined by the company they keep, we greatly reduce the location bias and we can calculate the average relevance-distance that a school has from the "top six" schools. I only show it here for the top 6 schools, but there are few major surprises for the other schools that I looked at:
These average ranks give us the following "Google B-School Ranking":
1. Harvard, Kellogg, Wharton [3]
4. Sloan [3.4]
5. Booth [3.6]
6. Stanford [3.8]
Non top-6 U.S. schools that I looked at have scores from 4 through 8.
There's a way to control for the distance in the Google Relevance rankings: you could add a distance column(s) and regress the data according to that. Then you might be able to get something similar to a true school quality/reputation ranking.
Methodology
On Feb 13, 2011, I Googled [related:<b-school website>] for the world's top b-schools, and noted the order in which other b-school websites showed up in the top 20 Google results. Only b-school homepages were noted; I did not include University homepages, duplicates, Wikipedia articles, or other pages. The results may have been personalized according to Google's algorithms.
Relatedness Results
| Index | hbs.edu | gsb.stanford.edu | wharton.upenn.edu | kellogg.northwestern.edu | chicagobooth.edu | mitsloan.mit.edu | stern.nyu.edu | www0.gsb.columbia.edu | london.edu | insead.edu | haas.berkeley.edu | mba.yale.edu | fuqua.duke.edu | iese.edu | tuck.dartmouth.edu |
| 1 | Stanford GSB | HBS | HBS | Chicago Booth | Kellogg | Stanford GSB | Columbia GSB | NYU/Stern | Cass (C.U. of London) | HEC Paris | UCLA/Anderson | Duke/Fuqua | UNC/Kenan-Flagler | IE | Duke/Fuqua |
| 2 | Wharton | MIT/Sloan | Kellogg | Wharton | Wharton | HBS | Wharton | Stanford GSB | Manchester | LBS | USC/Marshall | NYU/Stern | Kellogg | ESADE | NYU/Stern |
| 3 | MIT/Sloan | Chicago Booth | Stanford GSB | HBS | Stanford GSB | Kellogg | CUNY Baruch | HBS | INSEAD | IESE | UC Davis GSM | Wharton | Virginia/Darden | EAE | Yale SoM |
| 4 | Kellogg | Columbia GSB | MIT/Sloan | Stanford GSB | HBS | NYU/Stern | HBS | Duke/Fuqua | Warwick | HBS | Stanford GSB | Stanford GSB | Haas | EADA | Kellogg |
| 5 | Chicago Booth | Haas | Chicago Booth | MIT/Sloan | Haas | Wharton | Kellogg | Wharton | HBS | ESSEC | HBS | MIT/Sloan | Columbia GSB | INSEAD | Columbia GSB |
| 6 | Columbia GSB | Wharton | NYU/Stern | NYU/Stern | Duke/Fuqua | Chicago Booth | Columbia GSB | MIT/Sloan | Wharton | IE | Duke/Fuqua | Columbia GSB | Chicago Booth | Rotterdam SoM (Erasmus) | Virginia/Darden |
| 7 | LBS | Kellogg | Columbia GSB | Duke/Fuqua | NYU/Stern | Haas | Chicago Booth | Chicago Booth | IESE | Wharton | MIT/Sloan | Tuck | NYU/Stern | LBS | Stanford GSB |
| 8 | INSEAD | NYU/Stern | LBS | Columbia GSB | MIT/Sloan | Columbia GSB | Haas | Kellogg | IE | ESCP | Chicago Booth | HBS | HBS | HEC | Chicago Booth |
| 9 | Boston U | Yale SoM | Haas | Haas | Columbia GSB | Purdue/Krannert | LBS | Yale SoM | Stanford GSB | SMU (Singapore) | Kellogg | Chicago Booth | Wharton | Oxford/Said | Wharton |
| 10 | NYU/Stern | LBS | INSEAD | LBS | Tuck | Duke/Fuqua | TRIUM (executive mba) | Haas | LSBF | Stanford GSB | Columbia GSB | Kellogg | Goethe (Frankfurt) | UIBS (Barcelona) | MIT/Sloan |
| 11 | Yale SoM | UCLA/Anderson | Tuck | Yale SoM | Yale SoM | Yale SoM | LBS | EBSL | Kellogg | NYU/Stern | Oxford/Said | NYU Stern | Haas | ||
| 12 | INSEAD | Duke/Fuqua | LBS | LBS | Fordam GSB | IE | MIT/Sloan | Virginia/Darden | LBS | Chicago Booth | HBS | ||||
| 13 | Yale SoM | INSEAD | Chicago Booth | Wharton | Uconn SoB | HBS | |||||||||
| 14 | Virginia/Darden | Oxford/Said | Rotterdam SoM (Erasmus) | Tuck | Thunderbird | ||||||||||
| 15 | Cambridge/Judge | Oxford/Said | Yale SoM | ||||||||||||
| 16 | Boston University | NYU/Stern | |||||||||||||
| 17 | Columbia GSB | ||||||||||||||
| 18 | ESADE |
Analysis
The rankings relationship comes through. For the "top six" schools, the first three results are a closed set: HBS, Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, Booth, and Sloan all have a "top six" as their top three results without exception. We can even expand that trend to the top five results, and only four of 30 results are not "top six," with appearances by Haas (2), Columbia (1), and Stern (1).
The geographic relationships also stand out: Kellogg/Booth and Stern/Columbia pairings are the top results for each other. Fuqua has two other Southern schools (Kenan-Flagler and Darden) in the top three. Three of LBS' top four are from the UK and eight of all eleven are non-U.S.
Interestingly, for the excellent U.S. schools of Stern, Columbia, Haas, Yale, Fuqua, and Tuck, the relationship with "top six" schools is almost nonexistent in the top three results. Instead, the geography dominates, which explains the appearance of UC Davis and CUNY Baruch.
The European schools of LBS, INSEAD and IESE have rankings that are a mix of location and reputation. The geographic distance between the U.S. and Europe is clearly reflected in the fact that no U.S. schools are in their top three results. The relevance results for Asian b-schools (not shown) are nearly exclusively Asian b-schools, with no appearances by U.S. or European schools. It makes me wonder how much of the relevance disparity is a reflection of applicant location vs. quality vs. language vs. value of MBAs.
In the 192 relevance results, there are appearances by Darden, Fuqua, and Anderson but not a single mention of Ross! It's quite surprising, considering the ranking similar to those three schools, and the physical distance from Kellogg/Booth should also help. Anecdotally I know many people here at Kellogg who were deciding between Kellogg and Ross. Could this mean bad things for Ross?
"Google Rankings" Ideas
If we take HBS as the gold standard, we could simply rank schools by relevance to HBS. But we would still encounter location bias. Putting Boston U as #9 doesn't seem right.
- HBS
- Stanford GSB
- Wharton
- MIT/Sloan
- Kellogg
- Chicago Booth
If we go by the idea that school are defined by the company they keep, we greatly reduce the location bias and we can calculate the average relevance-distance that a school has from the "top six" schools. I only show it here for the top 6 schools, but there are few major surprises for the other schools that I looked at:
| Distance Rank | hbs.edu | gsb.stanford.edu | wharton.upenn.edu | kellogg.northwestern.edu | chicagobooth.edu | mitsloan.mit.edu |
| Harvard Rank | N/A | 1 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 2 |
| Stanford Rank | 1 | N/A | 3 | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| Wharton Rank | 2 | 6 | N/A | 2 | 2 | 5 |
| Kellogg Rank | 4 | 7 | 2 | N/A | 1 | 3 |
| Chicago Booth Rank | 5 | 3 | 5 | 1 | N/A | 6 |
| Sloan Rank | 3 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 8 | N/A |
| Average | 3 | 3.8 | 3 | 3 | 3.6 | 3.4 |
These average ranks give us the following "Google B-School Ranking":
1. Harvard, Kellogg, Wharton [3]
4. Sloan [3.4]
5. Booth [3.6]
6. Stanford [3.8]
Non top-6 U.S. schools that I looked at have scores from 4 through 8.
There's a way to control for the distance in the Google Relevance rankings: you could add a distance column(s) and regress the data according to that. Then you might be able to get something similar to a true school quality/reputation ranking.
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