Sam Chase, who's starting his second year at SMU's Cox School of
Business in
Dallas, had similar concerns. In addition, he wanted a
school with a strong focus on the private equity and hedge fund
industries, and he wanted a school in an urban center. So SMU -
which was ninth in the
Journal when he applied but barely
visible elsewhere - seemed like a good fit. "To me, picking a
school was about contacts and networking as much as anything else,"
Chase says. "And if I want to live in the South, a Southern school
makes sense."
Equally telling are admissions figures from the University of
Chicago, which has been as high as second and as low as 10th in the
last four
BusinessWeek rankings. According to admissions
experts,
Chicago's yield - the percentage of students who accept
offers to attend - should change along with the ranking. But the
school's yield has hovered around 60 percent since 1998. The only
significant deviation came in 2002, when 67 percent of those
offered a slot in the program accepted it. That's the reverse of
what should have happened, given that applicants had seen the
school drop from third in 1998 to 10th in 2000.
All this ties into a study
The Financial Times performed a
couple of years ago. The newspaper asked executive MBA students
what influenced their school decision. Almost 60 percent cited
brand image and reputation, while only 3 percent referred to the
rankings. Della Bradshaw, who oversees FT's rankings, says that
difference was quite surprising.
And then again, maybe not. "We've always said that students should
use the rankings as only part of the process," says
BusinessWeek's Merritt. "It should be a tool, and not the
decision maker."
Which may be a lesson that the schools can learn from their
students.
AND THERE'S MORE