University rankings are followed by the applicants to get an understanding of the resources, quality of teaching, school's reputation. These rankings are also considered as an indicator of employment prospects after graduating a business school.

In 1988 business week came with the first rankings evaluating business schools and now there are various sources available to prospective MBA applicants. Some of the available rankings are carried out by: Asia Inc., Business Week, The Economist, The Financial Times, Forbes, US News & World Report, and The Wall Street Journal

These rankings need to be interpreted with care. On the one hand they can be very useful sources of interpretation for current students, faculty, prospective applicants and recruiters. On the other hand, the criteria of ranking, if followed inappropriately can paint a wrong picture while selecting the school. We suggest you to follow the ranking to get a quick idea of the schools which interest you because of location, class size or job function you intend to join and then carry a detailed study by contacting current students, alumni and admission office. The admission office is very friendly and the staff usually helps the prospective applicants. Some methodologies used by well-known ranking bodies are:

Business Week comes with rankings for full-time, part-time, and executive MBA programs every two years. (Updates to ranked schools' profiles are published every year) Their rankings are based on a combination of student and corporate recruiter surveys (each weighted at 45%), and an "intellectual capital component," which measures "school's influence and prominence in the realm of ideas" (weighted at 10%).

Financial Times
The Financial Times ranks MBA programs every two years. The ranking is based on more than 20 factors. Some factors are the current salaries of each school's graduates and the percentage of salary increase, percentage of women students and faculty, the percentage of international students and faculty, the number of faculty with doctoral degrees, and alumni recommendations etc.

Forbes
Forbes ranks MBA programs according to their average ROI (return on investment). Alumni from each of the schools provide pre- and post-MBA salary information that helps Forbes to make these calculations.

US News and World Report

US News and World Report ranks full-time and part-time business programs accredited by the AACSB International. As per their website, full-time MBA programs are ranked according to the following criteria:
• Program quality assessment by peer academics
• Program quality assessment by recruiters
• Mean starting salary and bonus
• At-graduation job placement rate
• Job placement rate three months after graduation
• Mean GMAT of new entrants to full-time program
• Mean undergraduate GPA of new entrants to full-time program
• The proportion of applicants for admission to the full-time program who were rejected

Wall Street Journal
Each year, the Wall Street Journal ranks business schools that are accredited by the International Association for Management Education, as well as any foreign schools that are recommended by its panel of business-school deans, various associations and recruiters etc. The rankings are based on the opinions of MBA recruiters, who are asked to rate schools on a ten-point scale for each of 27 criteria having to do with the quality of each school and its graduates. ?

WHAT KIND OF SCHOOL SHOULD YOU ATTEND
Ranking and thus the reputation of a good school impresses prospective employers and students. But your career prospects won't necessarily be based on attending if you make sure to attend only a top business school. The reasons are:

• The best rankings do not assure the best quality of education. The factors included in these rankings can definitely give you a quantitative measurement but do not give you a holistic view of the faculty and their teaching, infrastructure and technology, team-work and leadership skills of current students and the value system at school.
• Regardless of the rankings, many business schools have connections with various industries. These connections can help students while finding their jobs.
• ? If you are a promising and ambitious then you tend to do well regardless of which business school you attend.

FLIP SIDE OF BUSINESS SCHOOL RANKINGS

• Most rankings guides include a few schools, rather than ranking all schools, and it's not usually clear how this initial group of schools has been selected. For example there are roughly 700 schools which offer MBA degree in the US and none of the ranking conducting bodies rank all of these.
• Many rankings take into consideration the evaluations done by business school deans, recruiters, alumni and current students to prepare rankings and there is little information on how these people evaluate the criteria.
• Rankings should evaluate individual programs rather than just evaluating the school as a whole.

• Business Week's ranking criteria
• USNews's ranking criteria
• The Economist's ranking criteria
• Financial Times's ranking criteria
• The Wall Street Journal's ranking criteria