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MBA Ranking discussions
Rankings are always big on student's decision, and even though many schools or people will say that they are not important, they in fact are very important. But rather than looking at a specific ranking, you should rather look at a combination of the rankings (Financial Times, Business Week, etc.) and identify trends.
This is our personal summary, but most of the MBA students and recruiter will agree. Based on prestige and perceved quality, here are the "buckets":
Tier 1 MBAs:
Harvard, Wharton and Stanford.
Amonng those Harvard and Wharton are more global while Stanford (which is much smaller), is more local with a large majority of alumni working in California and in Venture Capital and technology-related field. Wharton is very focused on finance, while Harvard is more biased towards management.
Tier 2:
Chicago-Booth, Columbia, Northwestern-Kellogg, Insead, LBS
Kellogg is well reknowned for marketing, while Chicago and Columbia are well-know for Finance. Insead is more international while LBS has a strong track record of placing students into London Investment Banks
Tier 3:
NYU-Stern, Duke-Fuqua, MIT-Sloan, Berkeley-Haas, Darthmouth-TuckYale, Virgina-Darden, UCLA-Anderson, Michigan-Ross, IMD, IESE
There are plenty of rankings available, and depending on how you look at it, those rankings vary. Personally, I like to look at the Financial Times rankings, because it is one that a lot of firms look at.
http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-rankings
Being an MBA myself, I would say that 3 "holy grail" schools clearly stand out in terms of academic quality, selectivity, network, and recruitment opportunities. Those are Wharton, Harvard and Stanford. It all depends on what you are looking at though - for example, Stanford is great, but for example, for a European interested in banking, this would probably not the right school and you would better go to Harvard and Wharton. If you are an entrepreneur, I would rather go Stanford and Wharton than Harvard, because they have so many more entrepreneur-focused classes and programmes. And they are totally different!! Harvard teaching is entirely case-based and discussion-based, Wharton is very analytical and more fact-based, Stanford is a whole different thing as well.
Then I would say Chicago, Columbia and Kellogg after that, but again it varies. Chicago and Columbia are really great for finance but not really outside that, while Kellogg is great for marketing but is a total disaster for finance etc. It is really hard to rank the other schools because it depends so much on what industry you look at, which location, etc.
What I advise people to do it to think about what you want to do after you graduate, and look at the biographies and backgrounds of the people in your dream job and dream company, then see for yourself where they've been to school.