It's weird times at school right now. More awkward than when Kendrick Lamar claimed to the be the king of New York (Jay-Z is just sitting court side I'm sure, laughing). More awkward than when you run into your ex and maybe you are friends or not friends and you're not sure what to do and you want to act cool but you're actually so distracted by everything else in your life that you're definitely NOT acting cool, but whatever. It's awkward. Awkward like when you need to sign your offer letter and you're getting to the point of, short of using the excuse "lady problems", you're running out of reasons why you have commitment problems and can't bring yourself to sign.
Why, you ask? Well, beyond the fact that half the student population is made up of second years who suddenly care a lot less about class but are now taking more advanced level classes...and beyond the fact that a quarter of the aforementioned population is also freaking out because they're not sure what they're going to do after they graduate (no job offer) and another quarter has offers and are pissing everyone off flaunting them and the other half are "re-recruiting". (NOTE: "Re-recruiting" has many definitions in business school, ranging from "I didn't like my job so I'm going to drop my resume to everyone who will take it in hopes that I can find something else" to "I'm not going to sign so I can look at other opportunities, and by "look at other opportunities" I mean, "drink my face off, stop going to class and sleep with everything in sight"".)
Forbes put us at #2 this year (based on ROI on how much we make vs. how much we spent to go to school), and The Economist put us at #1....based on pretty much the same metric. I don't wanna be "that guy", but I do want to say that someone's math must be wrong if we can't agree on this (there's also a lot of disparity within the top 5 between these two sources). The bigger question for me is, why do we care? Well, contrary to the belief of a lot of my non-bschool friends, who believe that this is all one giant pissing contest (which it is, to an extent), I'm (as in, me, personally) very invested in our rankings because it often determines how my friends and me will find jobs. Some companies place parameters on recruiting, saying things like, "we recruit the majority from the top X schools" or "we ONLY recruit at the top 10 schools". Which is, harsh, but as a company you really have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. We'd all like to believe that you can start anywhere and go anywhere, but there are real limits that are set-- be in the top 25, 20, 10, 5 to get yourself a leg up. These numerical allocations probably ultimately just cloud our judgements, but they happen every day.
Ultimately, these rankings are about as useful as a Starbucks in Salt Lake City (mormon joke!)/ a Black Angus in India (vegetarian joke!)/ soap on Haight Street (hippie joke!) or pepper spray in Canada (Canadians are so nice they make the rest of us look bad). All prospectives should really look at the programs and make a decision for themselves. I'm just scared of what these rankings are going to do for already-inflated egos.
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