Each year, we survey MBA programs directly to collect quantitative and qualitative data about them, including enrolment, program duration, faculty count, tuition and more.
In addition we do qualitative surveys, asking recruiters and others for their subjective impressions of the programs.
From this information we build two rankings:
1. Reputational Ranking
This Top 10 Ranking is based exclusively on the results of the qualitative survey. This year we partnered with Rogers Consumer Insights Team to poll Canadians with an interest in MBA education to ask which schools they thought most highly of. Our survey group of approximately 1,000 comprised MBA students and their parents, MBA graduates, and HR professionals and corporate recruiters.
2. Value Ranking
This Top 10 Ranking combines the qualitative reputational results with quantitative data about each program. Our Value Ranking is intended to highlight programs that provide good value for money and do not remove students from the workforce for extended periods. Schools receive points based on the following weighted ranking: 33.5% reputation (higher is better), 20.5% classroom experience (student-teacher ratio and cohort diversity), 13% average GMAT scores (higher is better), 13% tuition (lower is better), 13% required work experience (more is better) and 7% program length (shorter is better). This ranking is based on data related to full-time MBA programs only.
Some schools do not track, or refuse to provide, complete data for the purposes of the Value Ranking, and so are not included in this ranking. This year the following six schools did not participate: UBC, McGill, Toronto, Western, Windsor, and York.
Ultimately, each ranking is only a part of the overall picture of Canada’s MBA landscape. Students will need to investigate all their options based on their career stage, job field, geography, finances and many other factors.
A note on enrolment numbers:
In prior years we requested “total enrolment” from schools, meaning all students attending at the time the survey was conducted. Since programs start and end at different times, that number was easily distorted by timing. In order to try to get a clearer and more consistent sense of the size of all programs, we switched this year to asking for the total number of new students entering the program from July 1 to July 1.
