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How credible are those Business School Rankings? How do they come up with the top Business Schools in the land?

Business School Ranking is an effective tool used by many in searching for the right Business School. Most people rely on these data to determine if their chosen school is the school of their dreams. You're probably wondering what specific criteria/standards they use in ranking Business Schools and who are responsible for measuring them?

The Economist and Financial Times provide individual rankings of Business Schools. All of them use various criteria if a Business school deserves to be on the A-list or receives a failing grade. Other providers are BusinessWeek, Forbes, and Wall Street Journal.

The Economist

It conducted an Economist Intelligence Unit Survey of more than 200 senior executives. They came up with the following ten significant areas for selecting an open-programme provider

* Content and internationalism of the programme

* Faculty quality

* Provider's Amenities

* Quality of fellow participants

* Level of post-course support for partcipants

* Capable of demonstrating an impact back in the workplace

* Cost/value for money

* Wide range of courses

* Maintaining an ongoing relationship

Based on the aforementioned criteria, open programme participants were asked to rate those schools that they attended and eventually came up with top eight business schools.

Financial Times

They used twenty criteria to determine their rankings. The first eight criteria are based on alumni survey, the second nine criteria came from business schools' survey and the basis of last three criteria is on research survey.

Alumni Survey

* Weighted Salary

* Salary percentage increase

* Value for money

* Career progress

* Aims achieved

* Placement success

* Alumni recommendation

* International mobility

Business School Survey

* Employed at three months

* Women faculty

* FT doctoral rating

* International faculty

* International students

* International board

* International experience

* Languages

* Faculty with doctorates

Research survey

* FT research rating

According to Dr. N.M. Kondap, vice-chancellor of NMIMS University, "Surveys are conducted using different metrics and parameters. Some amount of discrepancy also occurs during the assessment of the survey which is reflected in the results."

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