MBA50.com has compiled the results of the major media MBA rankings of the last twelve months to produce the MBA50.com Premiership.
How do the top business schools in Asia Pacific perform when you combine these results? Despite the political unrest in Hong Kong, the city remains a key attraction for MBA students, with the University of Hong Kong pipping HKUST for the #1 spot. IIM Ahmedabad is the only top Indian school to take place in two major rankings, but loses its #2 position as CEIBS Shanghai ranks strongly. National University Singapore (NUS) also had a good year, and the ROI of the program scores highly with Forbes.
| 2014 Rank | 2013 Rank | 2012 Rank | Institution | Country | Financial Times 2014* | BusinessWeek 2014* | Economist 2014* | Forbes 2013* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | University of Hong Kong | China | 3 | 2 | - | |
| 2 | 1 | 1 | Hong Kong UST Bus Sch | China | 1 | 2 | 6 | 2 |
| 3 | 4 | 5 | CEIBS Business School | China | 2 | 1 | 8 | 3 |
| 4 | 2 | 2 | Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad | India | 4 | 4 | - | |
| 5 | 7 | 4 | NUS Sch of Bus | Singapore | 5 | 3 | 9 | 1 |
| 6 | 8 | 5 | Melbourne Business School | Australia | 11 | 4 | 3 | - |
| 7 | 5 | 8 | Nanyang Business School | Singapore | 7 | 7 | - | |
| 7 | 5 | 11 | Australian School of Business (AGSM) | Australia | 10 | 4 | ||
| *Ranking figure above is relative to other Asia Pacific b-schools | ||||||||
Methodology
Very few of the Asia Pacific business schools are ranked by four of the major media rankings. BusinessWeek and Forbes assess only a limited number of non-U.S. business schools, while US News does not consider business schools from Asia Pacific at all.
MBA50.com has calculated overall performance by looking at each ranking position compared to other Asia Pacific schools. In the case of the FT and Economist rankings, if an Australian business school ranked #51 in the overall FT ranking and #37 in the overall Economist ranking, but among Asia Pacific business schools was #4 in the FT and #2 in The Economist, then the relative Asia Pacific regional figure was used for the calculation, and added where appropriate to those of BusinessWeek and Forbes, before dividing the results by the number of rankings in which they appear to achieve an average score.
The idea of the MBA50.com Premiership is to compare the performance of schools in multiple rankings, and therefore does not include the many good business schools from Asia Pacific such as the Chinese University of Hong Hong and the Indian School of Business that appear in fewer than two rankings.
Candidates should remember that this is not scientific approach, and there is no attempt to weight any one ranking greater than the others. As stated before, each ranking uses a different methodology and measures different things with the inherent limitations of each assessment, so doing particularly well in one ranking and less well in another is reflected in the overall average score.
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