posted on Jan. 22: School of Business one of world’s top 100 business schools

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/bizschool.img.jpg” caption=”Michael G. DeGroote School of Business”]The Michael G. DeGroote School of Business is one of the top 100 business schools in the world, according to the Financial Times MBA 2001 survey published today.

The school ranked 80th overall and placed sixth out of nine among Canadian schools ranked. This is the first year McMaster participated in the survey.

The School of Business exhibited a strong showing when the data is broken down:

* McMaster placed first among the Canadian entries in the “placement success” category with a score of 93 per cent. The “placement success” category is defined as the percentage of 1997 alumni that gained employment with the help of career advice;

* As well, 43 per cent of the school's students were female when the study was conducted, another first-place ranking.

* The school placed second among the Canadian universities in the international mobility category. It is defined as a rating system that measures the school with the most internationally mobile alumni based on the movements of 1997 graduates.

The top business school in the world is the University of Pennsylvania: Wharton, the survey says. The top ranking Canadian school is the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario.

With about 1,500 MBA programs available across the globe, the MBA 2001 list features the elite of the world's full-time MBA schools. In its third year, the Financial Times survey provides a comprehensive assessment of the value of an MBA and the business schools that offer them.

The position of each school was determined by its performance in three general areas:

* the career progression accrued from the MBA (measured through criteria such as salary and salary increase, career progression and international mobility);

* diversity (assessed by statistics such as percentage of international and female students); and

* research which was measured by the Financial Times' own criterion.

Salary data were standardized and converted to U.S. dollars with purchasing power parity exchange rates estimated by the World Bank.

Rankings were complied from two questionnaires, one for the business school and the other for the class of 1997. Surveying graduates from this year allowed the researchers to chart the former students' progress through to graduation and into the workplace. Questionnaires were sent to all alumni, to be completed either by mail or on the internet. A response rate of at least 20 per cent was required for the business school to participate in the survey.

American schools dominate the rankings, with 51 appearing on the list; 32 schools are European, while nine are from Canada, three are from Australasia, two are from Asia, and three are from central and South America.