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How to Best Determine Rankings?


StrategicPHD

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Hey Everyone,

 

I am a strategic management applicant and I was wondering what the best way is to determine "rankings" for PhD programs. I see forum users talking about the top 5 or top 50 schools rather frequently and I am a bit confused about how this is being determined. I am trying to balance my research fit, which is of course the most important thing, with a quality school ranking so I can achieve a good placement upon finishing.

 

I found the UT Dallas top 100 ranking and I am finding this to be the only real ranking available. Since I am in strategy, I ranked by journal and selected only the strategic management related journals through 2015 -2020. Although, there is much overlap with OB in terms of journals so it is hard to differentiate. I also tried only selecting Academy of Management (AMJ) and Strategic Management Journal (SMJ).

 

The results do not seem to be representative of what people are saying. For example, Minnesota is ranked very high at number 4 for just AMJ and SMJ and yet I do not frequently see Minnesota hailed as Top 5. Yet Berkeley is 89th, Stanford is 61st, and Columbia is 26th and seem to be considered some of the best. Are these schools riding on their national reputation or MBA rankings? Or perhaps, on the non-management departments research?

 

I guess I am confused if there is a better ranking system somewhere or if maybe some users here know the reputation for strategic management specifically among schools that might help me decide which programs will land better placements given that they have scholars focused on my research interest.

 

Thanks in advance for your valuable insights.

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Top ten and top twenty programs tend to be generic placeholders I think as rankings are going to vary based upon who you ask, what research area they are in, and where they are located. If you ask a handful of people to list the top ten schools you will probably end up with a list of at least 20 or 30. Generally, I would not put much weight on rankings and what constitutes a top ten or top twenty program until after you've determined what your research area is going to be, if you have any geographical preferences for eventual placement, and how much stock you put into pedigree and prestige.

 

 

I am a late stage strategy PhD student and I am happy to discuss my own idea of relative rankings if you have specific schools in mind.

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Top ten and top twenty programs tend to be generic placeholders I think as rankings are going to vary based upon who you ask, what research area they are in, and where they are located. If you ask a handful of people to list the top ten schools you will probably end up with a list of at least 20 or 30. Generally, I would not put much weight on rankings and what constitutes a top ten or top twenty program until after you've determined what your research area is going to be, if you have any geographical preferences for eventual placement, and how much stock you put into pedigree and prestige.

 

 

I am a late stage strategy PhD student and I am happy to discuss my own idea of relative rankings if you have specific schools in mind.

 

Thank you for your reply. I suppose that does make some sense as I do tend to see different schools referred to in individual lists. I guess my main concern is going to a school I think is high quality only to not be able to go somewhere good after I finish because it is not seen favorably.

 

If you could, I would appreciate your thoughts on Columbia, UNC Chapel Hill, Boston University, University of Minnesota, Florida State University, and Western University

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Thank you for your reply. I suppose that does make some sense as I do tend to see different schools referred to in individual lists. I guess my main concern is going to a school I think is high quality only to not be able to go somewhere good after I finish because it is not seen favorably.

 

If you could, I would appreciate your thoughts on Columbia, UNC Chapel Hill, Boston University, University of Minnesota, Florida State University, and Western University

 

 

Those are all great programs that will open the door to solid R1 placements pretty much anywhere. Columbia is probably the clear top tier school that would appear on most people's top ten list but I think the others are not far behind.

 

That said, with this list, I would not worry as much about rankings and focus more on research/life fit if you have competing offers (unless you are wanting to place at a top 10 where pedigree matters a lot more). If you have geographic considerations, that is also important too. Most (all?) of these universities post their placement results and that is probably the most solid indicator of where you could go following the PhD. This is a great of schools to be considering! good luck!

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I think that the QS World University Rankings are most often referenced, although there are several other rankings as well. The QS ranking is also available by subject (i.e. business). You can typically find a list of rankings on the Wikipedia page of each university and this will give a good indication of the general ranking.

 

In general I would consider your list of universities ranked as follows (but the advice above about looking at other factors is important as well):

Columbia - Top 20

UNC Chapel Hill & Boston University - Top 100

Western and Minnesota - Around Top 100 (or just outside of this)

Florida State - >200

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Although rankings like QS can be useful as a starting point, I recommend applicants to be very, very careful about using rankings. You can easily disregard an amazing school because it is low in general rankings, even though it is a top school for PhD purposes. You can also think a school is much better than it actually is, if a school is strong for undergrad and MBA, but not for PhD.

 

For example, QS is not really focused on the research of a particular field, something that should be the priority for PhD applicants. Faculty/Student ratio is 20% of QS score, and that's usually not relevant for PhD applicants. Among other issues. QS wasn't developed with PhD applications in mind.

 

On the other hand, UTD relies too much on research output, not including other important factors for us. They wouldn't take into consideration the placement of PhD graduates, and that's also something to think about during applications.

 

So, even if generally speaking (including other kinds of degree, like undergrad) a school is not considered a top one, that's not necessarily the case for PhD programs and/or specific fields. PhD is very different from the other types of degrees.

 

For my field (Marketing), I wouldn't be surprised to see UNC considered as a top 20 for PhD applications, for example. For marketing research, UNC is very, very strong, with professors like Rajdeep Grewal (who is like a legend in the field), and an amazing record of placement for its PhD graduates (much better than I would expect if it was ranked # 100).

 

A long time ago, someone posted here the method they used to develop their own ranking, using the factors that they considered important. I think that's the best approach really.

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I think that the QS World University Rankings are most often referenced, although there are several other rankings as well. The QS ranking is also available by subject (i.e. business). You can typically find a list of rankings on the Wikipedia page of each university and this will give a good indication of the general ranking.

 

In general I would consider your list of universities ranked as follows (but the advice above about looking at other factors is important as well):

Columbia - Top 20

UNC Chapel Hill & Boston University - Top 100

Western and Minnesota - Around Top 100 (or just outside of this)

Florida State - >200

This could be very misleading, as QS ranking is based mostly on alumni and students ranking, not research. It tends to be very biased towards UK institutions who are infamous for gaming the ranking system, while US institutions don't really care about QS (US-News is the standard). I would say Columbia is top 10, FSU is top 50, and the rest is top 30. For management, you can use the UT Dallas research ranking, or the TAMU one: TAMUGA Rankings - Rankings. Of course you would have to look at the faculty at those schools, as well as their recent placement record.

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I'm so glad somebody asked this; I've been struggling to understand the difference between top 10 versus top 20 Strategy schools.

 

Does anyone know how Michigan Ross (Strategy) fares? Curious what the top 5-10 for Strategy schools are, because it basically seems to be the ives. Also, if someone has thoughts on the Strategy programs (how they're seen among other academics and where they rank aside from UTD) for UNC Chapel Hill, UCLA Anderson, Rice, and UW Foster, your input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

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For PhD programs, top 10 and top 20 are so close to each other that it's probably impossible to tell them apart in general terms. Even distinguishing between top 20 and top 50 can be a huge challenge.

 

Applicants need to get into the specifics of each one, to see which programs are the best for them. Not in general terms, but very specific ones. A school may be considered a top 10 in general terms by rankings like those, but be completely irrelevant and not be even top 50 for your specific topics of interest, for example.

 

Professors here often make fun of those rankings, saying that there are 20 schools thinking they are top 10, 40 schools thinking they are top 20, so on and so forth. They have a general idea about the quality of programs, but not something really precise to tell whether a program is really a top 10 or a top 20.

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