QS MBA by Career Specialisation Rankings: Methodology

The QS MBA by Career Specialisation Rankings build upon the QS Global MBA Rankings by empowering candidates to consider MBA programmes from a specific career outcome perspective. We closely look at the following indicators across seven industrial and functional specialisations. 

Data Collection

Data is collected from the long-standing QS Global Employer Survey, QS Business School Survey and Elsevier’s Scopus database, the world’s largest repository of academic journal data.

Methodology

The QS MBA by Career Specialisation Rankings are made up of three broad categories, which are comprised of six indicators that are weighted differently based on the specialisation in question.

Career Placements is represented by a score that combines insights on the percent of graduates from an MBA programme going into a relevant industry, function or starting their own business. This is balanced by an absolute placement score, which balances class size against the proportional outcome statistics.The employment outcome data conforms to the MBA Career Services & Employer Alliance (CSEA), Standards Edition VI, for reporting MBA employment statistics. This category aims to measure the career outcomes of respective specialisations in the business schools ranked.

Employer Reputation is derived from responses to the last five years of our prestigious QS Global Employer Survey, with the most recent years weighted higher. Our QS Employer Survey asks employers to identify those institutions from which they source the most competent, innovative, effective graduates.

Our survey responses quantify the importance of various MBA specialisations and skillsets, as well as the relevance of specific functions in the hiring process. This category measures the employer reputation of specific business schools based on how important a given specialisation is to the company in question.

Research Strength is a combination between the full-time MBA research and the specialisation MBA research. Both scores are calculated from SCOPUS data on research productivity. The category aims to measure how strongly each school in the targeted business discipline is associated with respective specialisation.

Finally, the combined final score of the noted indicators are weighted alongside the overall score from the most recent global MBA ranking, which contributes 25% to the final specialisation score.

Indicator Weights

The specialisation weights associated with the indicators noted above vary by specialisation according to data relevance and availability. The specific inputs used to derive scores are written in details in subject-specific methodology. We have given different weights to indicators to reflect the industrial or functional or entrepreneurial nature of the career choices, and to distinguish the seven specialisation subjects from one another.