PaGaLGuY.com
B-school Rankings 2009 - The Methodology

Welcome to the PaGaLGuY B-school Rankings!

Last year, we polled a crowd size of 5,410 people to publish India's biggest and most credible B-school Rankings using the innovative and new-generation concept of 'crowdsourcing'.

In its second year, the PaGaLGuY B-school Rankings will take 84 best known B-schools and compare each one of them to each of the others to create the most exhaustive blueprint of what India thinks about its Business Schools.. The survey breaks down the huge number of comparisons involved and 'crowdsources' it to thousands of people. The responses help us know what India thinks of its business schools.

What is New in PaGaLGuY.com B-school Rankings 2009?

- More B-schools. This year, we will rank 84 B-schools over last year's 76

- More people power. By surpassing last year's sample size of 5,960, we will deliver the biggest B-school Rankings exercise ever undertaken in India

- More valuable insights into the mind of the MBA applicant. How do women rank B-schools in different parts of the country? How do MBA applicants rank various parameters of a B-school in a fast-changing management education industry? Does advertising help B-schools rise in applicant perceptions?

We have conducted the survey to rank the B-schools in two stages. In the first stage, we asked you to shortlist the 84 B-schools that you felt should be included in this year's survey. We have completed Stage 2 of the survey where we asked you to compare the 84 shortlisted B-schools taken two at a time.

If you're curious about our methodology, find all your answers below.

1. The underlying belief - Perception captures everything

"XYZ Business School placed all of its 120 students in top notch companies within 7 hours"

"ABC School of Management was fined by AICTE for irregularities in fee structure"

"Five people from PQR Institute of Business have started their entrepreneurial venture even before graduating"

"A severe ragging case on campus has put MNO Management Institute under fire"

"123 School of Business closed its CAT cut-off at 97 percentile, thus elevating quality of students"

These are only some of the news snippets that stakeholders in the MBA value chain today constantly read and see in the media, share in hundreds of online communities and message boards and hear from their friends and professional networks. There is such an abundance of avenues for information exchange that today's MBA students, MBA aspirants, recruiters, academicians and other stakeholders are a lot more informed about which business school they would prefer for their purpose than they could have been 10 years ago.

All this information adds to perception. Today's MBA stakeholders have strong perceptions about the best known business schools, an important tool when seeking admission to or recruiting from a b-school.

In short, perception captures everything.

2. Survey Methodology: CommunityRank

The PaGaLGuY B-school Rankings ranks 84 best known and most discussed business schools across India and ranks them according to the perception of a large sample size comprising MBA aspirants, MBA students, recruiters and other stakeholders in the MBA value chain.

Survey Stage 1

Earlier this May, we first asked over 1,800 respondents which 84 B-schools they felt should be included in this year's B-school Rankings. So in Stage 1, we gave respondents a list of 100 best known Indian B-schools and asked them to eliminate any 15 B-schools that they feel the strongest about excluding from the rankings.

The 15 B-schools with the most number of vote-outs were cropped out of the list to result in the final list of 84 B-schools that is part of PaGaLGuY.com B-school Rankings 2009. Stage 1 of the survey is closed and here are the 84 B-schools shortlisted to be in the rankings.

Survey Stage 2

In Stage 2, we crowdsourced the comparison of each of the 84 business schools with every other to the people based on perception. The question format of the survey was, "Which one of the following two B-schools do you think is better?". We started this rankings survey with 85 B-schools but post this, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) - Bangalore chose to discontinue its MBA program. Hence the rankings survey now ranks 84 B-schools. But if every B-school among 85 is to be compared with every other B-school, it means a total of 3,570 comparisons. The math is simple and is illustrated below:

Clearly, it is impossible for one single respondent to answer a survey questionnaire with 3,570 questions. So we broke the questionnaire down into 70 randomly generated Chunks of 51 unique questions each (since 51 x 70 = 3,570). Each of these Chunks was to be answered by one respondent and when 70 respondents sequentially answered these Chunks, one Cycle of 3,570 comparisons would complete. In effect, it would take 70 people to compare each of the 84 business schools with every other one time over. Because no respondent knew which random set of B-schools he or she would get to compare in his/her questionnaire, there is no way anyone with an intention to influence the rankings could achieve success.

With every batch of 70 respondents, one new cycle of the comparisons would be completed. So when a total of 1,400 respondents answered the survey, each of the 84 B-schools would have been compared with every other 20 times! The larger the sample size, the more accurate is the wisdom of the crowds.

Eventually, the business school that has been rated to be better by most respondents came to be ranked 1 and vice versa.

3. What do the PaGaLGuY B-school Rankings indicate?

They simply indicate what India thinks about its Business Schools. In other words, they very accurately portray the order in which people prefer India's B-schools, overall as well as within demographic groups.

These rankings do NOT indicate the order of India's best B-schools and we doubt any authority that can claim to create such a list - of the 'Best' B-schools per se.