Using PageRank to evaluate a school's reputation?

[martingale]

I am in the process of searching for a business school to take a masters program. I was looking around at various rankings, trying to work out where to go. Randomly, I wondered whether I should check the PageRank of the schools I'm interested in. Most of them are 9's, a couple are 8's.

I'm thinking I should not go to a school with a PR of only 8... I should stick with the PR9's...

Is that crazy? Or is PR a good indication of brand/quality? How about Alexa rank?

[Bones]

This would be very funny if I didn't think you were serious!

[No5needinput]

You'll need to attend a business school of pr9 if you wish to obtain employment with a pr10 company.

[europeforvisitors]

If you're hoping for a degree in public relations, you'll want a school with a high PR score.

[martingale]

I am serious. I think fewer people will have heard of a PR8 school! A large part of the value of a B-school is the status it confers. How can a school confer status if people haven't heard of it?

[nonni]

If you want to find out which universities have name recognition with the general public, hang out in a sports bar. The University of Florida won both the football and basketball championships last year, and their cachet is very high. My daughter in in the business program there, and I credit her with most of the school's success.

[edited by: nonni at 2:00 pm (utc) on Mar. 16, 2007]

[bobothecat]

I'm thinking I should not go to a school with a PR of only 8

Hmmm... guess that leaves out Wharton, probably one of the best business university's around.

[centime]

Perhaps you should consider speaking to a number of professional recruitment agencies who specialise in the field you want to find work in

Mind you , the concept of choosing a business school based on TBPR, well , i really needed to read that today, :-) :-)

[martingale]

For most of the schools, including Wharton, the UPenn has a PR9 even though the internal Wharton page itself is PR8. That's true of Harvard as well, I was comparing the PR of the main University landing page. For the internal school page I'd eliminate the PR7's.

Of course I am screening via other methods too, I've collected the published rankings, I've talked to people, I've read the descriptions of the programs, and spoken with the admissions advisors.

I am not going to make this decision based ONLY on the alexa/google rank of these pages, but certainly I would want to go to a school that is "top 10" by all rankings, including the google/alexa ranking. I think Google PR and Alexa rank are actually fairly good measures of how high profile the program is.

[narsticle]

unless your going to a search engine optimization school what the heck does pagerank have to do with the quality of the school?

[europeforvisitors]

Just don't mention PageRank if the interviewer asks, "Why do you want to attend our business school?" :-)

[martingale]

What this thread is really asking at the end of the day is whether at the PR9/PR10 level PageRank is really a valid measure of reputation. Put it another way, how many PR9 sites do you know that got their PR9 through straight SEO and not because they were widely regarded as a highly informative site?

Conversely, even if there are fake PR9 sites, how good is the reputation of a university, how well known can it be, if it hasn't won a PR9 on its own non-SEO merits anyway?

[puppetmaster]

WOW, how the times have changed or I’m old. I couldn’t imagine picking a college based on their PR ranking. At the end of the day I don’t think the college PR score has any validation to the school reputation. Go to you guidance counselor or turn on ESPN. Do you know what you want to study?

[martingale]

I'm going to enroll in a business oriented masters program. I'm still deciding between an mba or a MSc in either finance or project management. I'm leaning towards the MSc route because it's harder and I like a challenge. I got my undergrad 11 years ago, and I'm looking to take a step up. I'd be looking at one of the three year programs or online programs that would allow me to work full time and study part time. After reviewing the online offerings it seems I probably have to relocate near a school and do the 3 year version to get a credible degree--the online pickings are slim, good schools like Wharton don't offer a regular online version and I can't afford the price tag of the accelerated "executive MBA" routes that some of them do have.

Note I wouldn't _pick_ a school based on PR, but I would _eliminate_ a school based on PR. I will limit my search to the schools that are PR9 and choose between the top 10 by alexa ranking. Out of those 10 I'll make my decision in a more conventional way--reading the brochure, talking to people, reviewing the Forbes / Financial Times rankings, etc.

[puppetmaster]

I’m not a 100% sure on this but isn’t alexa ranking only base on people that have the alexa tool bar downloaded on their computers. If that’s the case it’s not a very accurate stat to base your decision on. I can ask everyone in my office what alexa is and they wouldn’t have a clue.

puppetmaster

[Bones]

I'm thinking about buying a new games console. Wii or PS3?

Sony's website is a PR8. Nintendo's is a PR7. Therefore I can _eliminate_ the Nintendo Wii.

I'm assuming this despite Nintendo's decades more experience in the gaming market simply by using *Google's* three month old measure of their *website*.

As for the Alexa data - well that's just laughable.

Personally, I think you're crazy for even considering it a criteria for something that will affect your own future. Good luck with the business school though... sounds like you'll need it.

[martingale]

The key is this is a measure of BRAND, not QUALITY.

So of USNews' top 25 business schools I would eliminate Ohio State, UNC, Emory, and Dartmouth for having a PR8. The rest of the top 25 are PR9, except MIT which is PR10. I don't have the grades or the finances to go to one of USNewss top 10 schools, none of which are PR8 anyway, but further down the list, in the territory where I do have the grades and the finances to attend, there's a mix of PR8's and PR9's. All of the schools I'd consider are on the top 50 list, all I'm proposing to do is whittle down the list by knocking out all the PR8's, and knocking out schools that score terribly in Alexa. For example, Rochester is fairly high on USNews list, and PR9, but has a relatively poor Alexa rank, so I'd knock it out.

Why do you think PageRank is not a good measure of name recognition or brand quality?

I would agree, by the way, that Sony has a stronger and better known brand than Nintendo does. PageRank is not a measure of _quality_ but of _brand_ so I would think it's correct in that case. If you wanted the best known BRAND of game station buy a Sony Playstation. It may not be the best quality, it may not even be the most popular, but it's a better known brand among people who AREN'T game players.

Similarly I'd argue that while perhaps Emory is a great business school in terms of quality, it isn't well known to the general public, hence its bad showing in Google and Alexa.

[Bones]

PageRank is not a measure of _quality_ but of _brand_ so I would think it's correct in that case.

Right-o. So now we get to the real heart of your question.

You're basically not interested in getting a _quality_ education, but you want to be perceived as going to a good fashionable (ie "branded") school?

[Staffa]

....PR9/PR10 level PageRank is really a valid measure of reputation.

No, it's a reflection on their website not on the quality of their teaching.

[martingale]

Bones, yes. I actually do think that the value of a "top" business school is more about the branding than the quality of education. I don't really think that the quality of education you get at Harvard is better than what is delivered down the street at Boston University, but I certainly think that the Harvard MBA carries a lot more weight due to the outright fame of the Harvard brand.

So yes, in getting a business masters degree you are looking to get a boost in the perception people have about you, and that is based on their perception of the credential you receive. If you go to the best quality b-school in the world, but nobody has heard of it, it's worth very little.

[Phil_S]

Do you want a business degree to work for yourself or for some company?

If it were to work for yourself, I'd say save the money and attend some seminars from some of the best people in the industry and pay them for coaching.

No self-employed person needs a paper business degree, and I know many people in business that said they really don’t use much of what they learned in business school.

Is this post really serious, Google does not rate schools, or do they?

[Bones]

Ok, well I appreciate your honesty there.

Brands rise and fall and fashions quickly change. Personally I would still totally ignore TBPR and go with my own instincts as to what feels right. Good luck tho. :-)

[centime]

perhaps another thing people should bear in mind is that, only a minute fraction of the people who make hiring decisions spend more than a couple of hour online,

an even fewer of those have any interests in who webmasters are linking to

[jomaxx]

Shouldn't you just get hold of one of those articles that compares starting salaries of grads from different schools?

The PageRank of the school's home page is so many steps removed from what you're really trying to measure that relying on it in any way would be pointless. Thanks for the chuckle, though.

[edited by: jomaxx at 9:55 pm (utc) on Mar. 16, 2007]

[martingale]

I'm not expecting anyone to have heard of PageRank. I am expecting people to have heard of organizations that have a high PageRank, because I think at that level, PageRank measures the things that imply people have heard of it.

[walkman]

forget about page rank...can you get in?

Harvard
Wharton
Stanford
Columbia
LSE
Kellogg

....

[trinorthlighting]

Wow, we have a rocket scientist here... If your determing a school by PR then wow. Thats just stupid.

[topr8]

hey interesting post ... i get your point.

but i think the truth is if you are talking branding then once you are out of the premier league (sorry i'm a brit i don't know your terminology) which everyone has heard of: eg. LSE, HArvard, Stanford etc

then it doesn't really matter where you go becasue it is going to be considered second division whatever you choose, thus i'd look at other criteria.

side note: it does astonish me how well people with business degrees seem to progress through corporations, so good luck

[BigDave]

I really thought this was a joke thread when I first saw it.

All I can say is that if the school brand matters more than the quality of the education, it is no wonder that the rest of the world considers business majors to be some of the most useless people in business.

It sounds like you've decided to use that criteria, no matter what anyone else says, so why did you bother to ask?

[Phil_S]

"because I think at that level"
------------

I'm lost... I know I should have paid more attention in school :)