BusinessWeek Undergraduate School Rankings

[RayRichardMurphy]

I chose my University based primarily on numbers. I never was one of those people who visited the campus to see "if it fits me right". Emory University was a good choice for me for these reasons + I had a natural advantage there because I am from Georgia.
So now I am in my sophomore year, and if I want to transfer anywhere - now is the time to decide.

I've been looking at the BusinessWeek best undergraduate business school rankings. With the current economic climate - attending a top 10 school is a must. And that is a liberal estimate - its probably more like a top 5 school. Unfortunately it is not clear exactly what a top 10/top 5 school is - especially since only BusinessWeek has any quasi-serious raking method for undergrad. business schools.

I've been starting to doubt the BW rankings. They place a rather large emphasis (30%) on student satisfaction. While student satisfaction is nice, it does not translate into real world credit.

What would people here think about the rankings? How should I treat them?
Even better, anyknow know how I can import them into Excel so that I can create my own weighting system?

 

[alain]

My opinion, I don't believe in rankings. That's a bunch of BS... use them at your own risk

For your consumption, attached is the XLS you were looking for.

 

[doug reich]

I got almost everything into excel by holding down CONTROL while highlighting the table (in firefox); the headings are messed up, and the school names are slight truncated. See attached.

EDIT: beaten to it! The external data functionality... very clever.

 

[RayRichardMurphy]

Hi. Thanks a lot doug and alain!

@ALain, but without rankings - how would you know where to go?

 

[Stefan Zota]

My opinion, I don't believe in rankings. That's a bunch of BS... use them at your own risk.

I would refine the statement a bit. For graduate studies there are 2 base directions:
1. academic - research, PhD, focus on academia theory, all around strong foundation
2. proffesional - focus on practice, limited time, study only in directions that are useful in immediate work

For academia, research is everything. In this space an excellent school (top 5) and a Turin award proffessor can take you far.

For second direction, I fully agree with Alain. All that matters is the strength of specific program. This is determined by a few people, does not matter university name that much. The flexibility, practical approach is decisive.

Financial engineering is a proffesional degree by essence. Few people want to look only at theory ...

 

[alain]

I follow Stefan view. My point is not directed at academic work but at how far you want to go. So it has to do more with self motivation than anything else.

 

[IlyaKEightSix]

I know I shouldn't be saying this, but:

Accounting: great, amazing, the big 4 love Lehigh.

Finance: Backwater back office ops and tech from Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan (and in its Delaware office for credit cards, no less!). Want to know why Wall Street doesn't come here?

Because Lehigh's finance majors are a dime a dozen and wouldn't know independent critical thought even if it smacked them in the face with Shreve's textbooks. Twice. You don't need a four year degree to learn how to schmooze. You can teach a scientist finance and schmoozing. You can't teach a schmoozer science. (Jim Simons realized that. Kudos to the guy. I just wish I could meet him.)

Analytical Finance: Only two courses worth anything here, one of which I'm taking next semester (Financial Modeling & Stochastic Optimization) with my favorite professor in the whole world, Aurelie Thiele, (who got her dual PhD from MIT in CSE and EE when she was 24!), and the stochastic calculus courses from Vladimir Dobric. Professor Thiele is simply amazing--but she doesn't belong here. She's so overworked that with the stress she's being put through, she might as well leave and make ten times as much at RenTec with less stress. Oh, and the rest of the coursework? GBUS and one practice course. No C++.

 

[Christian]

Because Lehigh's finance majors are a dime a dozen and wouldn't know independent critical thought even if it smacked them in the face with Shreve's textbooks. Twice. You don't need a four year degree to learn how to schmooze. You can teach a scientist finance and schmoozing. You can't teach a schmoozer science. (Jim Simons realized that. Kudos to the guy. I just wish I could meet him.)

Analytical Finance: Only two courses worth anything here, one of which I'm taking next semester (Financial Modeling & Stochastic Optimization) with my favorite professor in the whole world, Aurelie Thiele, (who got her dual PhD from MIT in CSE and EE when she was 24!), and the stochastic calculus courses from Vladimir Dobric. Professor Thiele is simply amazing--but she doesn't belong here. She's so overworked that with the stress she's being put through, she might as well leave and make ten times as much at RenTec with less stress. Oh, and the rest of the coursework? GBUS and one practice course. No C++.

Ilya,

You have a bizarre way of doing two things. One is to glorify those who specialize in mathematical finance to levels previously reserved for gods. The second is what seems like an unending need to justify where you are studying and your academic background by trying to convince yourself or everyone here that you are mostly surrounded by idiots.

I'm sure that anyone lacking "an independent critical thought" is not that way because they studied finance in undergrad. I know that there are a few Baruch MFE students that followed the same path.

Last week five of the most influential hedge fund managers testified in front of the House of Representatives to give their opinion of the current financial situation. Guess how many of them rely principally on quantitative strategies for their hedge funds? One - your man Jim Simons. Guess how many of them had hedge fund returns greater than Renaissance Technologies this year? Three (sorry Ken Griffith).

I'm not being critical of your enthusiasm for mathematics and finance - that's something that everyone on Quantnet shares, but perhaps a more objective view as to what qualifies a person as an independent thinker and intelligent would be constructive to developing a career in whatever you choose.

 

[bigbadwolf]

@ALain, but without rankings - how would you know where to go?

The rankings in BW and US News and World Report (for example) don't mean much of anything. Their criteria is arbitrary -- as indeed any set of criteria must be, and the way they assign numbers to any individual criterion is open to question. More accurate for you to develop your own criteria according to what is important for you; then apply these to some set of schools on some shortlist of yours.

For grad work in the sciences, students look at the department in question and the faculty people to determine whether they want to go there.