Tuesday, October 29, 2013

IMD in the rankings - The Economist 2013

A couple weeks ago The Economist posted the results of their 2013 MBA rankings. IMD came in at a solid 13th place. Compared to last year's ranking, IMD's results didn't change a whole lot, but it did drop three places from last year's 10th spot.

A few months back I took an in-depth look at IMD's strenghts and weaknesses in the Economist's 2012 ranking. I thought it would be interesting to do a side-by-side comparison and see how IMD's rankings changed from 2012 to 2013.

Overall, IMD's value proposition continues to be strong, with high levels of student satisfaction and some of the best post-MBA placement/salaries out there. However, two things jumped at me from the results. First, IMD seems to still be feeling the effect of the less-than-ideal employment picture in Europe. The changes weren't too drastic, but there were decreases in the mean salary, the percentage salary increase, and the percentage of students with jobs three months after graduation. Also, IMD seems to have gotten more competitive. The average GMAT score has gone up by 10 points, the number of applicants per full-time place went up to 5 from 4 (a 25% increase!) and the student diversity scores have increased dramatically.

See below for the side-by-side results for each category:


  2013 2012
Overall Rank 13 10
Regional Rank 4 2
Open new career opportunities (rank) 39 25
Diversity of recruiters (rank) 82 >100
% working three months after graduation (rank) 31 7
% who found jobs through the careers service (rank) 34 28
Student assessment of career service (rank) 16 4
Personal development and educational experience (rank) 26 30
Faculty quality (rank) 41 32
Student quality (rank) 22 32
Student diversity (rank) 32 18
Education experience (rank) 64 86
Increase in salary (rank) 4 2
Percentage increase on pre-MBA salary (rank) 55 51
Post-MBA salary (rank) 3 1
Potential to network (rank) 22 24
Breadth of alumni network (rank) 77 78
Internationalism of alumni (rank) 22 25
Student rating of alumni effectiveness (rank) 10 12
Student assessment of facilities (out of 5) 4.37 4.5
Faculty    
Ratio of faculty to students 0.39 0.4
Percentage full-time faculty with PhD 100 100
Student rating faculty (out of 5) 4.5 4.4
Program    
Student rating of program (out of 5) 4.46 4.4
Ratio of overseas exchage places to intake 0 0
Number of languages on offer 3 0
Students    
Annual intake 90 90
Applicants per full-time place 5 4
Gender diversity score (out of 100) 48 28
Geographical diversity score (out of 100) 63 57
Average GMAT score 680 670
Average number of years of work experience 7 7
Age range of students 28-34 28-34
Average age 31 31
Student rating of culture and classmates (out of 5) 4.62 4.7
Student Origin (%)    
Europe 45 49
North America 12 8
Other Americas 9 9
Asia/Australasia 25 25
Africa/Middle East 9 10
Recruiters/Careers Service    
Industry sectors that recruited graduates (out of 11) 10 7
% graduates in jobs three months after graduation 90 95
% graduates finding jobs through careers service 65 74
Student rating of careers service (out of 5) 4.06 4.2
Post-MBA salary ($) 131,566 145,264
Increase on pre-MBA salary (%) 67 77

A few more observations:

  • IMD's strengths remain very much in place: IMD students are very happy with the career services, the faculty and the program as a whole; the caliber, diversity and internationalism of the student body is still outstanding.

  • Although the mean salary has decreased, IMD's post-graduation salaries are still among the highest out there. In fact, IMD's salary figures are third best overall in the Economist's ranking, higher than any of the top 10 schools.

  • One area that was already strong, and actually saw improvement in this version of the ranking is the rating of the IMD alumni network. People are often concerned that IMD's small class size leads to a limited alumni network. However, the student assessment of alumni effectiveness gets very high marks, indicating that the IMD network is more about quality rather than quantity.

The Economist's full ranking can be found here

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