Top Schools
No. 1: Stanford University
bonuses and any additional benefits such as relocation assistance and tuition reimbursements (40 percent);
and the ratio of the number of last year's on-campus M.B.A. recruiters to the number of 1996 graduates (5
percent).
Reputation was determined by two U.S. News surveys conducted in fall 1996. In the first, surveys were sent to the business school deans and directors of each accredited M.B.A. program. They were asked to rank each program by quartiles. In the second, 781 corporate recruiters representing a nationwide random sample of U.S. corporations who hired M.B.A.'s from U.S. News's top-ranked business schools in last year's survey of graduate schools of business were asked to select the 25 top graduate business schools in the country based on a program's reputation for academic excellence and its ability to produce top business leaders, effective managers, consultants and analysts, and successful entrepreneurs.
Overall rank was determined by assigning a value of 100 percent to the highest score achieved by the top school in each attribute-or subattribute. The scores for all the other schools were converted to percentages of the score achieved by the No. 1 school. These scores were then number-ranked in descending order. The scores for the measures of placement success and student selectivity-made up of the subattributes listed above-were determined by totaling the weighted percentages of these attributes. Next, the number ranks of the four indicators were weighted: The corporate recruiters' reputational survey accounted for 15 percent of the final score; the academics' reputational survey and student selectivity, for 25 percent each; and placement success, for 35 percent. The final rankings were then determined by totaling the four weighted number-ranked scores. The weighted score for the top school was given a value of 100 percent. The scores for all the others were then determined by figuring their totals as percentages of the score achieved by the No. 1 school.
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