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The 2009 QuantNetwork Ranking of US Business Schools
The 2009 US Business Schools Ranking by QuantNetwork is based on publicly available data from Xmarks, and uses a proprietary analysis algorithm* developed by QuantNetwork.
Data
Xmarks provides a free bookmark sync browser add-on for online bookmarks management. As of September 2009, over 830 million bookmarks have been uploaded to the Xmarks database. Aside from user services, Xmarks uses its technology to "determine the popularity of a web site based on how frequently it is bookmarked and what topics a site is about based on bookmark folders and tags"1 . Xmarks also generates a List of Similar Sites for a given web address, based on how bookmarks are grouped into folders: "We think of bookmarks as votes, and we’ve built some state-of-the art algorithms to effectively tally those votes to find the best sites across a wide range of topics".
The 2009 US Business Schools Ranking by QuantNetwork is based on the analysis of the frequency of appearance of the web addresses of different business schools in the bookmarks database of Xmarks, and on the position each business school appears on the list of similar sites corresponding to each business school.
By inserting the address of the website of a business school into the Xmarks bookmarks engine, a List of Similar Sites (LSS) to the website of that business school is returned. The vast majority of the websites from List of Similar Sites are websites of other business schools.
The data is gathered as follows:
- Step 1: Generate the List of Similar Sites of the Harvard Business School (HBS), which contains 20 US business schools.
- Step 2: Generate the List of Similar Sites for these 20 business schools.
- Step 3: Identify 22 business schools on the newly generated Lists of Similar Sites that do not appear on the LSS of Business School A.
- Step 4: Generate the List of Similar Sites for these 22 business schools.
- Step 5: Repeat until Lists of Similar Sites are generated for all the business schools that appear on the Lists of Similar Sites.
There are 71 Business Schools linked to each other in the Xmarks database, including all the 59 Business Schools ranked in the 2009 US News and World Report Ranking.
Aside from the 20 business schools identified in Step 1, one other business school (from the University of Texas, Austin) appears 17 times on 20 Lists of Similar Sites generated at Step 2, while all the other schools appear only four times or less.
We identify 22 Top US Business Schools this way. They are ranked using the algorithm detailed below.
Step 1: The following US Business Schools are on the LSS of Harvard Business School:
| Carnegie Mellon University | Stanford University |
| Columbia University | University of California, Berkeley |
| Cornell University | University of California, Los Angeles |
| Dartmouth College | University of Chicago |
| Duke University | University of Michigan |
| Emory University | University of North Carolina |
| Georgetown University | University of Pennsylvania |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | University of Southern California |
| New York University | University of Virginia |
| Northwestern University | Yale University |
Step 2-3: Identify the new business schools from the Lists of Similar Sites of the business schools from Step 1:
| Arizona State University | University of Arizona |
| Boston College | University of California, Davis |
| Boston University | University of California, Irvine |
| Brigham Young University | University of Illinois, Champaign |
| Georgia Institute of Technology | University of Maryland |
| Indiana University, Bloomington | University of Notre Dame |
| Michigan State University | University of Rochester |
| Pennsylvania State University | University of Texas, Austin |
| Pepperdine University | Vanderbilt University |
| Purdue University | Wake Forest University |
| Texas A&M University | Washington University in St. Louis |
Step 4-5: Identify the new business schools from the Lists of Similar Sites of the business schools from Steps 2-3:
| Babson College | University of Colorado, Boulder |
| Florida International University | University of Connecticut |
| George Washington University | University of Florida |
| Louisiana State University | University of Georgia |
| Ohio State University | University of Iowa |
| Rice University | University of Miami |
| Rutgers University | University of Minnesota |
| Southern Methodist University | University of Missouri |
| SUNY, Albany | University of Pittsburgh |
| Texas Christian University | University of Texas, Dallas |
| The College of William & Mary | University of Utah |
| Thunderbird School of Global Management | University of Wisconsin, Madison |
| Tulane University | Washington University |
Repeat: Identify the new business schools from the Lists of Similar Sites of the business schools from Steps 4-5:
| Temple University | University of Denver |
No other schools appear on the Lists of Similar Sites of either Temple University or University of Denver.
Algorithm
A proprietary algorithm was design to accommodate the following features:
- A strong correlation of Business Schools in terms of perceived quality is apparent: there are several distinct groups of Business Schools that appear near the top of each other’s List of Similar Sites.
- A ranking of web addresses under the Business Schools topic is available from Xmarks. The web site addresses of 17 of the top 22 business schools can be found among the top 50 in this ranking.
- Every List of Similar Sites for the top 22 Business School contains between 27 and 30 web sites (30 being the maximum possible number of sites). The length of a List of Similar Sites is not a fine enough indicator of the program strength.
To quantify the features above, two numerical factors, the Business School Relevance Factor and the Business School Strength Factor, are computed for each business school as follows:
The Business School Relevance Factor of Business School A is based on the position of the web page of Business School A on the Xmarks Business Schools Topic List, and ranges from 1 for a business school not in top 50 on the Xmarks Business Schools Topic List, to 6 for the business school at the top of the list.
The Business School Strength Factor of Business School A quantifies how high the business school website appears on the Lists of Similar Sites.
- (i) Compute a number of Total Points for each business school whose website appears on the List of Similar Sites of Business School A, based on the position the website appears on the List.
- (ii) Based on its number of Total Points, assign a number of Raw Appearance Points to every business school on the LSS of Business School A.
- (iii) Introduce a Multiplication Factor 1 for every business school, based on the position of its website on the Xmarks Business Schools Topic List, ranging from 0.125 for a business school whose web site is not in the top 50 on the list to 1 for the top ranked schools.
- (iv) The number of Appearance Points of Business School B on the LSS of Business School A is equal to the number of Raw Appearance Points of Business School B on the LSS of Business School A multiplied by the Multiplication Factor of Business School A.
The Business School Strength Factor of Business School A is equal to the square of the sum of the Appearance Points of Business School A on all the Lists of Similar Sites of the 22 business schools that are ranked.
For each business school, a Total Score is generated as follows:
- (i) Consider the List of Similar Sites of Business School A.
For each business school on the LSS of Business School A, compute a Numerical Score by multiplying the number of Total Points of the business school assigned as described above by the Business School Relevance Factor of Business School A. - (ii) Do this for the Lists of Similar Sites of all the 22 business schools.
- (iii) The Total Score of a business school is the sum of the Numerical Scores of the business school from all the Lists of Similar Sites, plus the Business School Strength Factor.
The business schools are ranked based on their Total Scores.
Relevance
The algorithm is very robust.
The rankings were computed three times over a one month period, since small changes in the List of Similar Sites may occur over time as the bookmarks database increases. The only differences were switches of positions of programs whose Total Scores were very close. These programs are reported as tied. With this choice, the 2009 QuantNetwork Ranking of US Business Schools did not change over time.
The algorithm results in relevant rankings when compared with other Business School Rankings.
The 2009 QuantNetwork Ranking of US Business Schools (2009 QN) compares very well with business schools rankings of longstanding tradition: the 2009 US News and World Report Ranking (2009 USNW), the 2008 Business Week Ranking (2008 BW), and the 2009 Forbes Ranking of Business Schools (2009 Forbes). All four rankings are included in the Appendix.
The correlations of these four rankings, as given by the average rank differential of the 22 Business Schools from the 2009 QN ranking, are given below:
| 2009 QN | 2009 USNW | 2009 Forbes | 2008 BW | Average Rank Differential | |
| 2009 QN | - | 2.0 | 5.0 | 3.1 | 3.4 |
| 2009 USNW | 2.0 | - | 4.8 | 3.5 | 3.4 |
| 2009 Forbes | 5.0 | 4.8 | - | 5.0 | 4.9 |
| 2008 BW | 3.1 | 3.5 | 5.0 | - | 3.8 |
The 2009 US News and World Report Ranking and the 2009 QuantNetwork Ranking are the closest of all the rankings, by more than 70% compared to the second closest pair of rankings, the 2009 QuantNetwork Ranking and the 2008 Business Week Ranking.
The 2009 QuantNetwork Ranking has the lowest Average Rank Differential of all the rankings.
About QuantNetwork
Established in 2006, QuantNetwork is a financial engineering news organization, primarily geared toward financial engineering education.
QuantNetwork is the top destination for prospective students seeking information and advice about pursuing graduate studies in financial engineering. With a rapidly growing membership worldwide, QuantNetwork works with educational and professional partners to provide its members with career and study opportunities in the field of financial engineering.
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| Business School | University | 2009 QN | 2009 USNW | 2008 BW | 2009 Forbes |
| Harvard Business School | Harvard University | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Stanford Graduate School of Business | Stanford University | 2 | 2 | 6 | 1 |
| The Wharton School | University of Pennsylvania | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Stern School of Business | New York University | 4 | 11 | 13 | 17 |
| Haas School of Business | University of California, Berkeley | 4 | 7 | 10 | 12 |
| Kellogg School of Management | Northwestern University | 6 | 3 | 3 | 8 |
| University of Chicago Booth School of Business | University of Chicago | 7 | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| Columbia Business School | Columbia University | 8 | 9 | 7 | 6 |
| Tuck School of Business | Dartmouth College | 9 | 8 | 12 | 2 |
| Fuqua School of Business | Duke University | 10 | 12 | 8 | 13 |
| Sloan School of Management | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 10 | 5 | 9 | 14 |
| Ross School of Business | University of Michigan | 10 | 13 | 5 | 18 |
| Yale School of Management | Yale University | 13 | 10 | 22 | 10 |
| UCLA Anderson School of Management | University of California, Los Angeles | 14 | 14 | 14 | 19 |
| S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management | Cornell University | 15 | 17 | 11 | 7 |
| Darden Graduate School of Business Administration | University of Virginia | 16 | 15 | 16 | 9 |
| Kenan-Flagler Business School | University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill | 17 | 20 | 17 | 15 |
| Tepper School of Business | Carnegie Mellon University | 18 | 15 | 19 | 23 |
| Marshall School of Business | University of Southern California | 18 | 20 | 23 | 32 |
| Goizueta Business School | Emory University | 20 | 22 | 21 | 22 |
| McCombs School of Business | University of Texas, Austin | 20 | 18 | 21 | 11 |
| McDonough School of Business | Georgetown University | 22 | 19 |
