US News' Top Online MBA Programs - 2011

Picture Courtsey: aceonlineschools.com

In its inaugural ranking of online MBA programs, U.S. News & World Report named 14 of 164 ranked programs, in alphabetical order. The schools include Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business, Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, and George Washington University’s School of Business.


The schools that made theranking had to be ranked in the top third of three of the four categories which are:

Internationals can't work anymore in UK after studies!

Indians who go to the United Kingdom for higher studies will no longer be able to stay on to work after completing their education. This new regulation, announced earlier, comes into effect on Friday. The number of applications from India for university courses in the UK commencing in September 2012 have already dropped, and the move is likely to trigger a further fall.

The earlier regime permitted overseas students to apply for employment for at least two years on payment of a visa fee of £500.This is being discontinued to reduce foreign workers in a climate of high unemployment in Britain.

Entrepreneur graduates may still find work in UK

Honey I shrunk the school! Kellogg goes smaller

In Feb 2012, the Kellogg School of Management unveiled its new strategic vision for the coming decade, called Envision Kellogg. The plan, announced by Kellogg Dean Sally Blount, contains many moving pieces, including an expanding global footprint and a complete overhaul of the school’s MBA curriculum. Most notably, Kellogg plans to shrink its two-year MBA program class size by as much as 25%, and double or even triple the size of its one-year MBA program.

There are few, if any, American one-year MBA programs as prominent the one Kellogg offers. (Among top-ranked schools, Columbia’s accelerated January-intake class is the most similar.) Recognizing this unique asset and the apparent growing popularity of accelerated MBA programs around the world, Blount is doubling down on the one-year program in an effort to further stand out vs. its U.S. competition. Its two-year full-time enrollment, which currently stands at about 1,115, may drop as low as 850. Meanwhile, the school’s one-year program class size could grow from approximately 80 students to as many as 250.

MBA Admissions, Background Checks and You!

With a lot of schools releasing their R1 and R2 decisions during the last few weeks, many admitted candidates might be having some questions about the background checks that are often reported to be conducted by the top MBA programs.

To help explain the process, here are some quick facts :

1) What is a background check?

Background check involves checking out and verifying the information that an applicant (and now an admitted student) provides to the school during his or her MBA applications. The process may differ a litl bit for different schools, it usually includes verifying that the applicant attended the schools (undergrad/grad/community, etc) that he or she claimed in the application to have attended, received the grades that are indicated in the application and worked in the organizations that is reported on the application. It also involves the checking the candidate’s job history, titles, starting and ending dates and salary information. Finally, background checks may even involve contacting applicant's recommenders to check about their support and confirming applicant's involvement in the extracurricular or community activities as she or he may have earlier claimed.

US News Ranking for MBA Programs - 2012 ranked

Like all rankings of business schools, the U.S. News list often engenders much controversy and debate. But it is among the most influential and most followed of several prominent rankings. This year, U.S. News said it surveyed all 441 master’s programs in business accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). Some 393 responded, with 136 respondents providing enough data needed by the magazine to calculate full-time M.B.A. rankings. U.S. News ultimately ranked 102 business schools this year, down from the 111 it gave numerical rankings to last year. At the bottom in a tie for a ranking of 101 were the business schools at Rollins College in Florida and Santa Clara University in California.

The magazine only ranks U.S.-based schools, unlike BusinessWeek, The Financial Times, or The Economist which publish global rankings, either combined or separate.

*To know how the rankings of different magazines and publications differ, and the methodology check out this post*

How to read the US News 2013 ranking table:

School: To fit all the data in the table above, we used the shortest possible name of the school. That’s why some schools are identified by their university names and others by the name of the business school.

Index: The total score that U.S. News assigns to a school. U.S. News says the “data were standardized about their means, and school scores were weighted, totalled, and rescaled so that the top school received 100; others received their percentage of the top score.”