The business school world held its collective breath last week, as Business Week unveiled its bi-annual, unparalleled, irrelevant rankings. HBS came in a devastating fifth, Stanford’s fourth place finish was also a painful dis from those wascally Business Week wabbits. School administrators spent the entire week on the phone, begging students to not transfer, and students at both Harvard and Stanford alike have reacted to the news by spending the past week sobbing uncontrollably into their job-offer letters.
According to the latest ranking, apparently any school in the general metropolitan area of Chicago is better than HBS. In fact, one of the new characteristics that Business Week used in its ranking criteria this year included the question, “Is your school located anywhere in the state of Illinois?”. “Northwestern and U. of Chicago clearly dominated this field this year,” stated an anonymous Business Week editor, “Whereas Harvard finished that category with a disappointing score of zero points. Shockingly enough, so did Stanford. This is indeed a crushing blow to these two institutions: oh, how the mighty have fallen!”
“In addition, everyone knows that the business world is a tough world indeed. That’s why we’ve concluded that business schools that have luxurious country-club settings with every fabulous amenity available are way too soft on developing their students. That’s why we ranked the paradise-on-earth-campuses of Stanford and HBS lower. Tough business can clearly only be learned in tough ghetto campuses! Our all-new ‘graffitti index’ captures this metric nicely. Again, I’m afraid to report that HBS loses out.”
“Lastly, this year we’ve created a revolutionary new way to gauge business school effectiveness at training its students. Just think, what do the following schools have in common: Kellogg, Wharton, Chicago, Stanford? Think, THINK, Mr. HBS Smarty-pants! All of these schools have the letter ‘O’ somewhere in their last syllable. The letter ‘O’ is also found in the words ‘money’, and ‘power’. Harvard, on the other hand, has an over-abundance of the letter ‘A’. ‘A’ is the letter found in the words ‘last place’. Coincidence? I think not.”
Added the editor: “Man, I’ll bet Brit Dewey is regretting sending me that ‘Thanks for your interest…unfortunately, we regret to inform you…’ letter years ago.”
