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Please help improve my understanding of rankings of management departments.

 

I have taken a first pass by using UTD's ranking based on research productivity in the following journals between 2010-2019: AOMjournal, ManSci, AOMreview, Admin Sci Quarterly, OrgSci, SMJ. I have a number of questions related to this ranking:

1. Does this ranking align with your own perceptions of relative department quality?

 

2. UTD's list of top 20 departments includes many places with non-top 20 MBAs. For example, USC, Penn State, Toronto are all top 10 in the UTD list. They outrank Stanford, Columbia, and Northwestern. Why doesn't faculty productivity align with MBA rankings? Do Stanford, Columbia, and Northwestern just not have faculty who are active in management scholarship?

 

3. Does the UTD ranking align well with phd program quality and job market placements in management academia? i.e., should management/strategy/ob phds from USC, Penn State, Toronto expect similar or better job market prospects than graduates of similar fields from Stanford, Columbia, and Northwestern?

I am ultimately trying to get a sense for how people perceive these different departments. I would appreciate any comments that would help me add some context to the UTD rankings.

 

[TABLE=class: outer_border, width: 400]

[TR]

[TH=class: header headerSortDown]Rank[/TH]

[TH=class: header, width: 55%, align: left]University[/TH]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]1[/TD]

[TD]UPenn Wharton[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]2[/TD]

[TD]INSEAD[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]3[/TD]

[TD]Harvard Business School[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]4[/TD]

[TD]University of Michigan Ross[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]5[/TD]

[TD]New York University Stern[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]6[/TD]

[TD]University of Minnesota Carlson[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]7[/TD]

[TD]University of Toronto Rotman[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]8[/TD]

[TD]USC Marshall[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]9[/TD]

[TD]MIT Sloan[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]10[/TD]

[TD]Penn State University Smeal[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]11[/TD]

[TD]Maryland Robert H. Smith[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]12[/TD]

[TD]Stanford University GSB[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]13[/TD]

[TD]London Business School[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]14[/TD]

[TD]UT Austin McCombs[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]15[/TD]

[TD]Duke University Fuqua[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]16[/TD]

[TD]Columbia Business School[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]17[/TD]

[TD]Arizona State W.P. Carey[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]18[/TD]

[TD]Washington University Olin[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]19[/TD]

[TD]Northwestern Kellogg[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]20[/TD]

[TD]UT Dallas Naveen Jindal[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

Edited by umbrella
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First, despite the name, I'd drop Management Science from the list. UT Dallas ranking (if I am not mistaken is), 1 publication in one of their listed journals = 1 point divided by number of co-authors (.5 points for Northwestern and .5 for Columbia if two people co-authored a paper).

 

So, a better metric would probably be productivity per faculty.

 

But beyond that, there are really two types of schools: counting schools and impact schools. A counting school will only care about pure number of "A" publications. Whether that is UT-Dallas, TAMUGA, FT50, or an internal list: they just want you to have X number of A's to get tenure.

 

The truly elite programs care about impact. One of the schools in your top 10 denied someone tenure with multiple solo-authored A's because they felt the papers were not high impact.

 

Lastly some schools also publish broadly: they might go after American Sociological Review or American Economic Review before going to one of the UTD journals, or even submitting to Science or Nature (this goes back to the impact discussion).

 

So to answer your questions

 

1) No, but ranking is inherently subjective and all of the schools on this list are fine schools.

 

2) You would have to look at productivity per faculty. If a school has 50 management professors and they publish 1 A every 3 years, is that better than a department of 10 that publish 1/year?

 

3) I think I can see you view USC/Penn State/Toronto below Stanford/Columbia/Northwestern -- check Torontos recent placements (Northwestern, MIT, Duke, LBS to name a few in the last couple years), or USCs (Michigan, MIT, Ohio State). If you get into a top 20 PhD program you are going to be ok.

 

There are so many factors that go into the job market. School status is one component (and one that matters, particularly if the other parts of your 'profile' lack): e.g. who is your advisor? What's your publication record? What's your pipeline like? Who have you co-authored with? What is your reputation in the field?

 

But you really should not be concerned with how everyone perceives departments or calculates these things. If you ask 10 people for top 10 lists you will get 10 different lists. They might have a lot of overlap or the same names being brought up, but they won't be in the exact same order. Ultimately, you need to look at who is researching what, where, and who (and what program) aligns best with what you want to do. You find a few (imperfect) matches, you get in, find the advisor who again is an (imperfect) match, then do good work. Because ultimately it is your individual reputation that determines your success on the job market (your school's status is part of that, but if it is all you are relying on, you are not going to last long).

 

 

Please help improve my understanding of rankings of management departments.

 

I have taken a first pass by using UTD's ranking based on research productivity in the following journals between 2010-2019: AOMjournal, ManSci, AOMreview, Admin Sci Quarterly, OrgSci, SMJ. I have a number of questions related to this ranking:

1. Does this ranking align with your own perceptions of relative department quality?

 

2. UTD's list of top 20 departments includes many places with non-top 20 MBAs. For example, USC, Penn State, Toronto are all top 10 in the UTD list. They outrank Stanford, Columbia, and Northwestern. Why doesn't faculty productivity align with MBA rankings? Do Stanford, Columbia, and Northwestern just not have faculty who are active in management scholarship?

 

3. Does the UTD ranking align well with phd program quality and job market placements in management academia? i.e., should management/strategy/ob phds from USC, Penn State, Toronto expect similar or better job market prospects than graduates of similar fields from Stanford, Columbia, and Northwestern?

I am ultimately trying to get a sense for how people perceive these different departments. I would appreciate any comments that would help me add some context to the UTD rankings.

 

[TABLE=class: outer_border, width: 400]

[TR]

[TH=class: header headerSortDown]Rank[/TH]

[TH=class: header, width: 55%, align: left]University[/TH]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]1[/TD]

[TD]UPenn Wharton[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]2[/TD]

[TD]INSEAD[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]3[/TD]

[TD]Harvard Business School[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]4[/TD]

[TD]University of Michigan Ross[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]5[/TD]

[TD]New York University Stern[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]6[/TD]

[TD]University of Minnesota Carlson[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]7[/TD]

[TD]University of Toronto Rotman[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]8[/TD]

[TD]USC Marshall[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]9[/TD]

[TD]MIT Sloan[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]10[/TD]

[TD]Penn State University Smeal[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]11[/TD]

[TD]Maryland Robert H. Smith[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]12[/TD]

[TD]Stanford University GSB[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]13[/TD]

[TD]London Business School[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]14[/TD]

[TD]UT Austin McCombs[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]15[/TD]

[TD]Duke University Fuqua[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]16[/TD]

[TD]Columbia Business School[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]17[/TD]

[TD]Arizona State W.P. Carey[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]18[/TD]

[TD]Washington University Olin[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]19[/TD]

[TD]Northwestern Kellogg[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: center]20[/TD]

[TD]UT Dallas Naveen Jindal[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

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3) I think I can see you view USC/Penn State/Toronto below Stanford/Columbia/Northwestern -- check Torontos recent placements (Northwestern, MIT, Duke, LBS to name a few in the last couple years), or USCs (Michigan, MIT, Ohio State). If you get into a top 20 PhD program you are going to be ok.

It's not that I am looking down on these schools; instead I am looking for a sanity check. I am new to business academia and am thus quite unfamiliar with rankings/perceptions about these programs. I have noticed that management/strategy phds have a relative dearth of ranking information (and discussions of rankings) compared to MBAs and even phd programs in other fields like econ, finance, and accounting. Given this lack of information, I was hoping to gather more information about quality that might be missing from UTD's publications based ranking. Your comment is very helpful in that regard.

 

But you really should not be concerned with how everyone perceives departments or calculates these things. If you ask 10 people for top 10 lists you will get 10 different lists. They might have a lot of overlap or the same names being brought up, but they won't be in the exact same order.

I am interested in identifying these overlapping programs. I currently have no idea which programs belong to this "core" group within management. For example, would USC/Penn State/Toronto be in most people's list of top management schools? The UTD ranking unfortunately does not give me this info. Neither does a scan of faculty research.

 

It would be very valuable if members could list those programs that are generally considered to be within the top tier, second tier, etc. I understand that relative rankings within each tier could vary, but it'd be nice to at least have approximate groupings of schools into different equivalence classes.

 

Ultimately, you need to look at who is researching what, where, and who (and what program) aligns best with what you want to do. You find a few (imperfect) matches, you get in, find the advisor who again is an (imperfect) match, then do good work. Because ultimately it is your individual reputation that determines your success on the job market (your school's status is part of that, but if it is all you are relying on, you are not going to last long).

Point taken. I have researched schools thoroughly and know where my research aligns the best. However, it is still useful to know how different programs are perceived by the management community. Such information is abundant in other disciplines, but there is a lack of such info for management programs.

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3) I think I can see you view USC/Penn State/Toronto below Stanford/Columbia/Northwestern -- check Torontos recent placements (Northwestern, MIT, Duke, LBS to name a few in the last couple years), or USCs (Michigan, MIT, Ohio State). If you get into a top 20 PhD program you are going to be ok.

 

It is not that I look down on these school; I am just looking for a sanity check since I am new to business academia and I can't tell how the UTD rankings align with people's perceptions. I don't have a problem with USC/Penn State/Toronto being ranked above Stanford/Columbia/Northwestern. I am trying to confirm whether the broader community of management scholars agree with this ordering.

 

If you ask 10 people for top 10 lists you will get 10 different lists. They might have a lot of overlap or the same names being brought up, but they won't be in the exact same order.

This is precisely my point. UTD is also only one ranking and I don't want to rely on it solely.

 

You mention there might be a lot of overlap for a core group of schools. I am trying to understand what this core group consists of. Currently, I don't know whether USC/Penn State/Toronto would appear in everyone's list of top management phds. I am looking for members to group departments into broad equivalence classes (i.e., tiers). I understand that the relative ordering of departments could vary within tiers, but it'd still be good to know what these tiers are.

 

Ultimately, you need to look at who is researching what, where, and who (and what program) aligns best with what you want to do. You find a few (imperfect) matches, you get in, find the advisor who again is an (imperfect) match, then do good work. Because ultimately it is your individual reputation that determines your success on the job market (your school's status is part of that, but if it is all you are relying on, you are not going to last long).

Point taken. I have done what you suggest. The point of this exercise is not to identify research fit. I am looking for people's perceptions of which are the top departments.

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Thanks StrategicMGMT. I am trying to identify the group of schools that you said would appear in everyone's ranking of top departments. For instance, I do not know whether USC/Penn State/Toronto is in everyone's list of top schools.

 

I understand that there could be slight changes in how people order departments. However, it should be possible to group departments into broad equivalence classes (tiers), recognizing that relative rankings within the tiers could vary by person. Can you help with this?

 

 

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I can give you my (very) subjective top 10(ish)

 

Wharton

INSEAD

MIT

Stanford

Harvard

NYU

Toronto

Michigan

LBS

Northwestern/Duke/Columbia

 

Thanks StrategicMGMT. I am trying to identify the group of schools that you said would appear in everyone's ranking of top departments. For instance, I do not know whether USC/Penn State/Toronto is in everyone's list of top schools.

 

I understand that there could be slight changes in how people order departments. However, it should be possible to group departments into broad equivalence classes (tiers), recognizing that relative rankings within the tiers could vary by person. Can you help with this?

 

 

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In my world (strategy), there are really clear top 3 schools (Wharton, INSEAD, HBS), then there are a few more that are probably rounding out top 10 depending on how stable you're talking (Bocconi, Minnesota, Duke, LBS, Toronto, NYU, and Michigan), but really #4-#20 are very very close and the differences become more about year to year dynamics, luck, specific research streams and literatures where certain schools are perhaps a better fit than others
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We have a significant overlap so I am not sure why you feel I’m too focused on brand/prestige :)

 

i think Minnesota and Bocconi are great schools: but look at where they place PhDs. It’s not the same as other schools on your list.

 

In my world (strategy), there are really clear top 3 schools (Wharton, INSEAD, HBS), then there are a few more that are probably rounding out top 10 depending on how stable you're talking (Bocconi, Minnesota, Duke, LBS, Toronto, NYU, and Michigan), but really #4-#20 are very very close and the differences become more about year to year dynamics, luck, specific research streams and literatures where certain schools are perhaps a better fit than others
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  • 2 weeks later...
We have a significant overlap so I am not sure why you feel I’m too focused on brand/prestige :)

 

i think Minnesota and Bocconi are great schools: but look at where they place PhDs. It’s not the same as other schools on your list.

 

I completely understand your point, and it’s certainly a fair one on the surface, although placement is a much more complex issue than this implies, and there is an issue of aggregating complex dynamics to a simplified comparable measure. I was speaking about direct research rankings, it even those are much more complicated than it would seem.

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Number of publications alone is a poor metric, because it's quantity over quality.

 

Again, sure, sort of, even if an A across top schools is generally an A, but this only introduces more subjectivity into the picture.

 

Some schools would like you to think it really is about quantity vs quality, but in reality is quantity vs. quantity AND quality.

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Agreed. The sort of traditional way of looking at it was 'lots of A publications= symptom of a good dept/school', however now it seems like some schools/depts are trying to boost their ranking by becoming publication mills. UT-Dallas comes to mind. In terms of publication quantity they're right up there with the top 5/10, but I don't think anyone really considers them anything more than top 50.
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