Hi Andy
Thanks for putting this ranking together. I was just thinking that the last rankings were a little old and could use some freshening up. Thanks for spending your time and creating this. You've also done a very good job of ignoring most of the crazies on this thread.
I agree with the other member that this methodlogy is miles better than the last methodology. For myself, I disregarded the last ranking after reading the methodology. However, I think some improvements can still be made with this latest list.
I'm glad this is loosely based on the US News methodology. However, I think the biggest thing missing is the survey of deans and directors. Survey of employers and recruiters is good, but they don't know the details of each of the programs. I would trust the opinion of a dean or director more to tell me how good the professors are and how up-to-date the material is.
With deans and directors missing, the weight obviously had to be given elsewhere. I agree with the other poster about too much weight being put on acceptance rate, especially compared to the US News methodology. In this case, I would believe the NYC schools will naturally have more applicants and be artificially inflated here.
As you mentioned, starting with the US News methodology is good. Is there a reason that you didn't follow the weighting more closely? I can understand that normalizing the data can be ambiguous, but I prefer the weighting of US News than the one you choose.
I also don't understand the 5% bonus concept. If you wanted to encourage participation, is this better than simply using zero for the unanswered questions?
Finally, would you be able to report an overall numeric for each program? US News has the 5.0, 4.9, 4.8 listed for most specialty graduate programs (not business). It would provide more context for this list.