What are peoples opinions on the stats presented in this BW slide show?  My first thought is that a lot of these numbers look a lot better then I would have expected given the grim anecdotes I've been hearing from my Class of 2009 classmates and from those members of the Class of 2010 whom I still keep in touch with at my school (T10-15 ranking).  I think we all know that most career service placement numbers are at least partially BS, and I'm curious what the general concensus is on the final results posted by top schools - BS or legit?

 

A few things from these rankings stick out to me (not in a good or bad way, they just stick out): 

 

- Props to Yale.  Assuming that the numbers posted haven't been cooked, they seem to have fared much better then their peer schools.  Maybe this economy is one senario where a focus on government.non-profit really pays off.  Perhaps this will cement Yale's rep in the top 10.  Curious to see if reports on the ground match the numbers.

 

- Props to Tepper.  I've always thought this was a massively underrated school (though I admit that my opinion is at least partially biased because my undergrad was CS/EE and CMU is a CS/EE powerhouse).  CMU's salary and placement numbers (plus GMAT stats) have always been near the top of the non-M7 top 20, yet the school is always talked about as near the bottom.  Maybe this will make the top15 US News ranking stick and raise the schools profile.  Again, curious if the school is really good or just good at cooking the placement stats. 

 

- Ouch to Wharton.  Great school no doubt, but 20+% unemployed 3 months after graduation is just awful for a school with Wharton's history.  Granted finance was not the industry to hang your hat on this year, but Chicago seemed to do OK for itself.  Stern too.  Maybe Wharton is just out of practice when it comes to cooking their numbers since its been so long since the've had to?

 

-Ouch to Ross, Cornell, Duke, and UCLA.  These top 15's all got hammered.  Three out of four are located in the middle of nowhere when it comes to MBA jobs.  Maybe thats all it takes to get hammered in a crappy economy.  All are obviously quality schools, but just didn't get the job done this year (at least according to this report).

 

I've written enough.  Curious what others have to say.

 

Wow great point.  Wharton's career services I heard has been underfunded of late.  Maybe most of those students are trying to go into private equity and are holding up for  the miraculous but unlikely rebound of the leveraged finance market. Those guys need to get their act together. Columbia and Chicago, both fellow finance programs are beating them by such a high margin.

Doesn't mean anything because we don't know the numbers for people who took any job and people who are holding out for exactly what they want. Let's say a school comes in with a 99% employment rate within 1 month of graduation. Well what if 99% had to settle for anything.  What if a school comes back with 80% but 80% got exactly what they wanted.  Which school would be better?

Agree with your points mbaiguess.  Statistics can mean a lot of things.  Every school got hammered.

You can make those arguments, and to a certain extent they are valid.  That said, however, I don't really buy those arguments in Wharton's case, as Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Kellogg, and Booth, all did much better.  It starts to say something about Wharton's student body.  Not that they aren't as bright, but perhaps they have a higher incidence of people that suffer from delusions, and think they are better than the rest of the world, in an apparently unjustified way.  The end result is that students holding out for unrealistic jobs will damage the reputation of the school...imagine if you didn't find a job by the end of the summer...now all of a sudden you have the competition of the FT students seeking placement...not good.

So why did you think Wharton did much worse ? Is it students with unrealistic expectations, an uncooperative career services or both. Afterall it is a school's job to communicate that certain jobs are just unrealistic.

From a superficial standpoint, I'm not sure why Wharton suffered more than the rest.  I do know that when I visited during admit weekend last year, that I walked away from Wharton with a sour feeling that wasn't present at the other schools I visited.  Many of the Wharton students seemed to have a chip on their shoulder, and a lot just complained about not getting into H/S...this wasn't the situation at Sloan, Booth, or Kellogg (note, some of the Wharton people were absolutely amazing...so it's just part of  the crowd, not the whole crowd). This complaining, at least to me, created a slightly negative environment at Wharton, and that may translate into recruiting...obviously in a bad way.  Second, I think many Wharton people feel a sense of entitlement.  The whole HSW thing is perpetuated in consulting firms and high end finance...now the students are at HSW, and think that they're all equal, but Wharton's the clear outlier...hence some delusions.  Third, I didn't get the best impression from career services...definitely better at Booth, and the people at Sloan were pretty darn interesting to talk to...definitely tightly connected to tech (note:  I didn't talk with kellogg career services all that much, so won't comment). 

In the end, I'm prone to think that it's career services that was most damaging to Wharton, partly because of job sourcing, and partly because they couldn't tame some of their students' potentially unrealistic expectations.  But that's just a guess...and rather uninformed at that.  Based on my experiences, Wharton lagging the pack doesn't surprise me, I just can't really say why...sorry, this answer isn't very helpful, but it's all I can offer.

great article!