Selections Interview with Gayle Garrett, Project Director, U.S. News & World Report’s Best Graduate Schools Guide

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Selections: That gets to one of my questions about the improvements you’re making to your survey methodology so that it is more accurate and transparent.
Garrett: These changes will make the survey more transparent, because we can’t really . . . the way things were formulated, it wasn’t absolutely clear what we were getting.

Selections: You want to make sure you’re getting apples from all of the schools and not a hodgepodge of apples, oranges, and bananas, correct?
Garrett: Exactly.

Selections: How did U.S. News develop the methodology—including the weighting systems—for its business school rankings?
Garrett: I will leave that up to Bob. But I will say this: Both law and business are areas in which we have been able to incorporate outcome measures, and the outcome measures are in terms of employment. How quickly graduates get jobs. And what salaries they are able to command. Because everybody wants to be able to answer the question, Is it going to be worth it to me financially to make this big investment to get my MBA or to get my law degree? And one of the ways that you can indicate that is by showing what other people are able to achieve by going through that particular program.

Selections: Are there other changes that you’ve made or are in the process of making to ensure transparency and accuracy of your rankings?
Garrett: One of the things that we will be doing, and this comes out of a meeting we had with GMAC about a month ago. And that has to do with reporting admissions data, specifically, providing more information about undergraduate GPA. The point being made that not all applicants and not all applicants that get accepted do or can provide undergraduate GPA information. Some schools do not look at it, particularly in regard to the case of foreign students. One of the things that we are going to be asking on the survey this year is, again, the number of students for which that data is provided. So, I don’t yet know how we will factor that in, in terms of the ranking model. But, certainly, on the Web site we will show the number again. They all have to take the GMAT, but they don’t necessarily have to provide that GPA. When students look at that information in the table, they should bear that in mind. They should be aware of that.

Selections: Speaking of the GMAT scores, I know that U.S. News looks at GMAT scores, but Business Week does not. How do you defend using the GMAT scores as a way to evaluate a school and then rank it?
Garrett: You’ve asked a couple of questions. One, you’ve made a comparison between what we do and what Business Week does. If you look at our ranking model, and look at all of the indicators in it, we ask for the opinion of peer deans and program directors about school quality. We ask recruiters their opinion of program quality. We gather data on the GPA and GMAT scores of entrants, and we look at the acceptance rate. And then we look at the outcome indicators of how soon graduates get jobs and what they get paid. That is a cluster of indicators that all point of the quality of the program, and specifically, the level of the people who go in; the peer opinion as to what is going on, in terms of the program; and then the peer opinion of what comes out of the program, including hard numbers about the jobs they get. It is really looking at before, during, and after, with regard to the program.

I think I will let Bob speak about Business Week, because I haven’t really looked at their ranking. I know that they do include a lot of descriptive work in their particular rankings. And I’m not certain exactly how they make comparisons. It is always nice to have these little capsule reviews, but if you’re then going to have a way of ordering them, I’m not familiar enough with how they do that particular ordering. I do know, based on some of the calls that I field, that people speak to me as if people here at U.S. News sat around and gave their own opinions about programs. And actually the U.S. News rankings involve no opinions of anybody who works for U.S. News. The U.S. News knowledge and input comes in making a decision as to what indicators we look for and how we balance them or weigh them. But nobody sits around here and says, “You know, I’ve heard that such and such a program is on the skids, or such and such a program is up and coming.” That just never happens.

So in a way, the model is a product of what U.S. News does, rather than U.S. News as a group of people taking a look at individual schools and making a judgment.

Selections: The opinions come in the form of asking the peer deans and the program directors and the recruiters. Why not ask the students? Why not factor in their opinions, as Business Week does?
Garrett: The major reason for that is because of cost. Were we to try to do that, it would bust our budget. Besides being a really daunting task, we would have to hire a lot of people. I think in a way—and Bob may not agree with this—when you look at the surveys that are put out, rather than saying, “Well, Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, and U.S. News don’t come up the same results,” people should look at it that these are actually enterprises that ask different questions And they have a different perspective. And while I’m personally not averse to people looking at the results of other approaches, I think it is very, very important for the people who look at the results from our work and from other people’s work to keep that in mind. I, for example, thought the Wall Street Journal ranking was fascinating, because it was really asking recruiters, “What schools are good for you to work with?” And that was very clear in the analysis. I think certain schools would be well advised to take good care of their recruiters.

Selections: That was an interesting survey, because Wall Street Journal took a different tack with how they approached their survey. It was interesting that Stanford, which was ranked number 1 in the latest U.S. News survey, was ranked number 45 by Wall Street Journal.
Garrett: So many of their recruiters said, “We don’t go out to California, because those graduates just expect really high salaries and really plush jobs.” What they are saying is, “They are not really operating in a market where we want to go and try to get the cream of the crop.”

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