The Most Reliable Source

look at the criteria they use and use the survey with those that are most important to you

rankings are irrelevant. go to HWS

You need to check their methodology and see which one you agree with the most. Or just take what you like from each of them.

Personally, I like the FT rankings: http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-rankings

USNews is the closest to reality, i.e. to how employers view schools. Next is Bweek - its ordering might be a bit off, but the top 10-15 schools are roughly correct. Other rankings are way off. Generally, the tiers go as follows (approximately): H/S/W Booth/MIT/Kellogg/Columbia Tuck/Haas/Ross/NYU/Duke/UVA/Yale/UCLA/Cornell Within these tiers, there's not a huge difference in general reputation and recruiting opportunities, so any debates about whether a school is #10 or #12 or #9 are useless.

I generally like P&Qs rankings: http://poetsandquants.com/2010/12/14/poetsquants-top-100-mba-programs-i…

Only change I'd make is swapping W with Chi. Nice thing is they index the rankings so you can see which schools are generally competitive with each other despite a small difference in ranking.

i think the most important thing to be considered is that you have to look at the regions and what firms will recruit at your school and people go too much purely on the rankings... UT will place you amazingly into energy much better than northwestern will...

for example if you want to do investment management certain schools will be much better than others -- northwestern is known for its marketing strength, columbia and chicago great for IM... carnegie mellon as well but then (from what i hear) ross is great for consulting but wont place you well into IM... so it all depends on what your goals are both geographically.

i applied to UT since i had a desire for energy finance so this made the most sense and would personally shoot myself living in ithaca or hanover NH for tuck or cornell. miserable existence