What it takes to be the best B-school

dear b-schools, DO YOU HAVE IT IN YOU? (lolz :p)
Check this out!!

I have a question. People normally talk about "Top Business Schools". My question is which exactly are the top business schools around the globe ? What qualifies a school to fall in this category ?

Baccardisprite answers:

It's a good question.
My answer / definition, both arguable and debatable is - A top business school (below in no particular order):

• is almost immediately recognized and recalled (instant oohs... and aahs...) i.e a well-known university or legacy brand that has built itself over many years of the success enjoyed by its alumni (both of the university and the business school)
  
• offers it's students a superior allround academic, social and cultural experience
  
• (in a stable/good economy) opens professional doors for the students in the form of strong access to its closest job market with less regard to a students back-ground, origin, or citizenship or in some cases even pre-MBA experience - in other words the opportunity to change elements of one's career (industry, function and geography). Example - a Top US school to the US job market. An INSEAD all over Europe and the UK. An LBS in London.
  
• has a strong, legacy network of alumni who are known for their willingness to help current graduates
  
• has career services that possesses the street-credibility to bring top companies from various industries to campus; therefore the oppportunity for MBAs to meet, network and interview with; and offers the right king of training, advice and guidance for students to confidently go off-campus to find their jobs
  
• offers you the ability to experience a program with smart (or smarter), ambitious, knowledgeable and wise peers.

These are the things I wanted from my school. Below are the schools that largely fulfil these criteria. These regularly turn up in the rankings NOT because the magazines think so but because they have built themselves over years of success and investment of time, money, and effort to the criteria stated above:

USA - Stanford, Harvard, Wharton, MIT-Sloan, Chicago, Kellogg, Columbia, Michigan, Tuck, Duke, Darden, Haas, Yale and a few others I might have missed.

Canada - Richard Ivey, Rotman, Queens and York - good because they're good schools and I understand that Canada has recently started offering MBAs the opportunity to work in Canada for 2 years after graduation (this needs to be confirmed).

EU - INSEAD, London Business School, IMD + more recently the European schools that made it to the UK Government's HSMP list of school's whose MBA graduates are eligible for a work-permit (NOT tied to employer) in the UK.

Asia Pacific - IIM (A/B/C) - now with the PGPX which is likely to be a success, ISB, INSEAD (Singapore), U-Chicago (Singapore EMBA for more experienced people in the region), Ivey (Part time in Hong Kong), CEIBS (Shanghai).

Notice that I would NOT rank the top 2 Australian Schools here until /unless Australia offers a good opportunity for Internationals to work in Australia after the MBA. Currently not the case as Australia is generally unwelcoming to non-Aussies or non-permanent residents. Unless the country offers an automatic opening to work there or at least a short term chance to work without having to be sponsored, this is NOT a good place to study.

If someone has recent updates that show an improvement to this, please share.

Given their weak career services I would also NOT rank NUS & NTU (Singapore) and CUHK and HKUST (both in Hong Kong).

Hope this helps everyone.


COURTESY NOTE:
Taken from B-schools-Assistance desk thread of pagalguy.com. (very heavy and informative thread by the way!

the thread is mostly controlled by the big-guy.

This guy, (calls himself baccardisprite) lives in Switzerland (spelling check :p).
Whaterver he writes is pure gold, product extracted from is wide work-experience (more than hundred months of international work-experience.) and twelve months of heavy duty MBA from one of the top b-schools in the world. JohnyCAGE recommends to go through all articles he posted.
I have extracted some of his thoughts on what it takes to be the best business school.
(reference link)