JEREMYCWILSON.COM

US News MBA Rankings and Law School Rankings

Only months after seeing the worst of the financial crisis and watching professionals flock back to business and law school, it seems as though people are paying more attention to school rankings than ever before.  Even though many still maintain that fit is the most important factor when applying to grad school, it’s undeniable that applicants are shining a bigger spotlight on rankings than usual.  While dozens of websites and magazines come out with their version the annual rankings, U.S. News has long been considered the gold standard. And just last week, we finally learned which schools struck gold in 2011.

Last Friday, the U.S. News released its 2011 B-School and Law School rankings.  It’s no surprise that as usual, there was very little change at the top of both lists, a fact which was also confirmed by the leaked rankings days before.  In the end, my opinion is that these new rankings don’t really change much, because I personally think that there are a lot more things to consider when choosing a school than the school’s ranking. However, most people do factor ranking into their analysis, so it is interesting to see how things shake up from year to year.  As such, below I’ve listed the top 15 ranked MBA programs for 2011. You can also click here to see the full list on US News website and click here to see how U.S. News came up with its rankings (i.e. methodology).

1.   Harvard Business School
1.   Stanford Graduate School of Business
3.   MIT Sloan
4.   Kellogg / Northwestern
5.   Chicago / Booth
5.   Wharton / Penn
7.   Tuck / Dartmouth
7.   Haas / Berkeley
9.   Columbia Business School
9.   NYU / Stern
11.  Yale SOM
12.  Ross / Michigan
13.  Darden / UVA
14.  Fuqua / Duke
15.  Anderson / UCLA

Similarly, here are the top 14 for this year.  You can click here to see the full list of law schools and click here to see how U.S. News came up with its rankings (i.e. methodology).

1.    Yale
2.    Harvard
3.    Stanford
4.    Columbia
5.    Chicago
6.    NYU
7.    Berkeley
8.    Penn
9.    Michigan
10.  Virginia
11.   Duke
12.   Northwestern
13.   Cornell
14.   Georgetown