How to read a business school ranking?
There is no single ranking of business schools, but several, which compare neither the same schools nor the same criteria. Before reading a rank, you need to look at three elements: the scope (post-baccalaureate or post-CPGE, national or international), what is measured (a programme, the whole school, its societal responsibility or the student experience) and the year of publication.
The scope: which schools are compared
The point that is least understood, and often the most decisive: two rankings do not necessarily cover the same population of schools. L'Étudiant's ranking of post-baccalaureate grandes écoles de commerce, for example, compares fifteen schools with direct entry after the baccalaureate, whereas the one from Challenges magazine covers post-CPGE schools. These two populations do not overlap completely, so a school can appear in one and not the other, or hold a very different place depending on whether it is assessed among post-baccalaureate or post-CPGE schools.
Comparing a rank obtained in one with a rank obtained in the other therefore makes no sense, even though both rankings appear under the same word "ranking". Before trusting a place, check which starting population it belongs to: post-baccalaureate or post-CPGE, national or international. Excelia Business School itself appears in several of these rankings, each with its own scope: find Excelia Business School's results in these rankings to place them in relation to one another.
What each ranking measures
Two rankings can share the same generic name, "business school ranking", without measuring the same thing, since the object being assessed changes from one ranking to another. The QS Business Masters Rankings rank a specific programme rather than the school as a whole, so the same school can appear in them several times, at different places, depending on the specialisation considered. The Times Higher Education Impact looks at a different object: it assesses institutions' contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), across a set of 1,603 institutions worldwide. HappyAtSchool® instead measures self-reported student experience, by school category, a criterion unrelated to an academic level or a societal contribution.
This diversity explains why a school, Excelia Business School included, can appear in one ranking and not in another: these are not the same things being measured. The right method is to start from what you are trying to find out, whether it is a programme's recognition, societal commitment or student satisfaction, and then to choose the ranking that actually measures it, rather than starting from a rank and giving it a meaning it does not have.
The limits, and what a ranking does not say
No ranking measures what matters most, however, when choosing a school: state recognition of the qualification. This is governed by a mechanism distinct from a ranking, which combines accreditation from the Ministry of Higher Education, listing on the RNCP (France's National Register of Professional Certifications) and the grade awarded, which places the qualification within the licence-master-doctorat framework. Discover the state recognition of our qualifications: no ranking says anything about it, whatever the place obtained.
International accreditations follow an entirely different logic. A ranking is recalculated every year according to criteria specific to each media outlet, whereas an accreditation is obtained after several years of audits and upgrades, before being renewed over time. Excelia Business School thus holds a quadruple accreditation (EQUIS, AACSB, AMBA and EFMD Master), held by fewer than 1% of business schools worldwide: discover our EQUIS, AACSB, AMBA and EFMD Master accreditations and what an international accreditation guarantees. A ranking is annual and relative; an accreditation is multi-year and absolute, a more stable benchmark than a place liable to vary even though nothing has changed in the programme.
The most useful recommendation remains to cross-check several sources and to look at what is measured before looking at the rank. If a choice remains difficult after this cross-reading, talk to an Excelia Business School adviser to help clarify your decision.