Berkeley Haas Ranking Going up?

smario999

Recently there are two good news for Haas.

1. Haas professor Oliver Williamson Wins Nobel Prize in Economics 

2. The Haas School of Business was ranked the #1 business school in the US and #3 in the world by the Economist Intelligence Unit in a survey of full-time MBA programs that was published online today at http://www.economist.com/business-education/. 

Do we expect to see HAAS can get into Top 5 school from current Top 10 category?

thecow10000

1.  One professor winning a Nobel prize doesn't mean anything (Chicago Booths has the most Nobel prize winning among its faculty and it is not a top 3 school).

2.  Every top 15 school can find some kind of "I am the best/top 3" argument.

Bottom line is the long and established tradition/reputation/quality of alum/influence.  I can't see Haas beating out any of the M7 schools in the near future.

dani19

as a Haas student I should probably say something in this post hehe

1. nobel prize is for "Economics", not business, so not exactly the same thing. Chicago is probably the best school for economics, I don't think the traditional top MBA schools would argue with that. (though Prof. Williamson's nobel is the 2nd nobel for Haas, and the 5th for Berkeley in terms of Economics - the other 3 are the econ department)

2. I agree that the "prestige" or "perception" ranking is harder to change. However there are 2 things probably worth pointing out - 

(1) look at trajectory - if you look at the popular rankings now compared to 10-15 years ago, you will see how far Haas has come, and that's what exciting about the school now;

(2) general rankings aren't that useful for picking schools - you should always look at what subjects you are interested in. For example, if you are all about finance, then Wharton and CBS probably should be near (if not directly) top of the list. On the other hand, if you want to do entrepreneurship in any of the hot VC fields (cleantech / internet etc.), then I would argue Haas would be close to the top of the list, over East Coast schools - the school's expertise and the Silicon Valley environment is simply fantastic. 

Matching your interests with the school's students' interests is extremely important, because the environment fosters the individual growth. For example, at Haas very few people talk about i-banking (Goldman's presentation is half empty), so it would be harder for people develop and prepare for that career; whereas it seems every student is crazy about energy or digital media, and therefore there's a much better environment to help people pursue these fields. While all schools talk about diversity etc., you really don't want to be at a school where your career interests fall into the minority categories - then you'll really have a hard time developing yourself for your dream career.

Bottom line - always think about what you want to do, and find out what the best schools are for that - overall rankings only matter to a limited degree.

以下是引用thecow10000在2009/10/29 1:39:00的发言：

1.  One professor winning a Nobel prize doesn't mean anything (Chicago Booths has the most Nobel prize winning among its faculty and it is not a top 3 school).

2.  Every top 15 school can find some kind of "I am the best/top 3" argument.

Bottom line is the long and established tradition/reputation/quality of alum/influence.  I can't see Haas beating out any of the M7 schools in the near future.