List of United States Graduate Business School Rankings - Marketing Significance

Marketing Significance

Business school rankings are important to the various business schools because they are an important marketing tool used to recruit top students, and lure recruiters from the top companies. Business schools attempt to achieve higher rankings in order that they may obtain the top students who will over the course of their careers most likely benefit the school by achieving high ranking positions, attaining great influence, and accumulating great wealth. Such students often are able to help other students attain better (higher paying, more respected and more influential) jobs. Students use the rankings to choose their school, and creators of the rankings produce them to aid in this decision.

Rankings have such importance that business school deans cite improving rankings under significant accomplishments and are said to hire and fire over such successes. A typical quote explaining a rise in rankings can be found by looking at summaries such as "Recruiters believe Georgetown's new dean and career-services director have made speedy progress in producing more polished, marketable graduates." If a dean chooses the wrong strategy it is likely to show up in the results as well: "Recruiters criticized some of the Regional schools for lowering their standards and admitting less-qualified students when their applications plummeted a couple of years ago."