We are the Champions, we are the champions...

Sitting in the student lounge on Thursday afternoon, I felt there was something odd going on. It's about 4pm and usually people come in and see if there's an empty table and then leave the lounge if none is available. Today was a bit different. They came and they stayed. Some were standing even. What the hell is going on...!?

Then the big screen started to come down (last time it came down it was for European Cup Championship... that's real futbol, for my American friends; prior to that it was Karaoke with Dean Kole, who complained that the song didn't sound the same as the one she knows from 30 years ago.) and it hit me: it's the announcement of business school rankings from Business Week! It was going to start at 4:30 for the live announcement.

Well... first of all, I don't really care; second of all, I needed to be at Gleacher to sell tickets for the conference; so I left... as some eager studentfrantically scrambled to get my table.

Fast forward to 2 hours later... I finally heard the buzz: WE ARENUMERO UNO. hmmmm... interesting. Suddenly, I do care about the rankings. =)

Nah, I don't. But it does raise my curiosity on how they ranked schools. Anyway, like any typical GSB person, once you're curious, there's no going back. Basically, it's 45% student/graduate satisfaction, 45% recruiter satisfaction, and 10% intellectual capital (measured by number of publications). But this isn't what I found interesting...

Based on responses, they further place grades on teamwork, communication, analytics (hmmm... this looks like how a certain consulting firm does their reviews...), teaching quality, and career services. Grades range from A+ to C. And what do you know... there is grade inflation inBW rankings! Top 20% is A+, next 25% is A: that's right, if you are above average, you are an A. Even more astonishing is that a a brief glance, none of the top schools scored A+ across the board. Curious, I scrolled down to find aschool who was A+ in everything. Only one winner:Fuqua at #9.

So... do you trust these rankings!? Of course... especially when you are #1. Oh yeah.