What is a College Ranking?

The MBA students all over the world are used to checking the rankings of the various business schools in order to get into the best ones depending on their circumstances.

The Mises Economics Blog is questioning the validity of these rankings.

How can you rank heterogenous, dissimilar institutions? Each instructor has their own subjective evaluation of a student, course work is different at each institution, resources available to students are different, student-body diversity/dynamic is different, how can these be aggregated?

It also links to some good articles and analysis on the value of a university and the correctness of these rankings.

A great article by Malcolm Gladwell called the " the social logic of ivy league admissions" in the New Yorker magazine is linked to. This is a must read.

Its conclusion:

• Success depends on Individual ability like drive, energy, goal setting, hard-work
• Harvard, Yale and other Ivy league institutions are more like 'modelling agencies' where they take the best of the lot of make them a little better
• Harvard is like a luxury brand and selects its students on the basis of maintaining that brand rather than any academic or other merits

Another story in the WSJ on why Haravrd is still in the press even though it is not so relevant in terms of its academic output as before. The short answer : the harvard-educated journalists