Scratching your head trying to figure out whether or not to get an MBA—and where to
get one if the answer sounds like a yes? You’ve come to the right place.You are now reading
the seventh and most comprehensive edition of a book that is considered the bible
for all students and observers of graduate schools of business.Hundreds of thousands of
applicants have relied on earlier versions of this book for its wealth of unvarnished, tellit-
like-it-is information and analysis of the top MBA programs. Deans and recruiters
also use this guide as a benchmark of how well they’ve put their ideas and strategies into
place.

For this guide, BUSINESSWEEK magazine used the thousands of surveys of graduates
and corporate recruiters that it collected for its most recent ranking of business schools
as primary research material. That was just the beginning. Next, the staff interviewed
hundreds of students, alumni, recruiters, faculty members, and deans to gain an even
better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the top schools. The result is
this book—a product that reveals far more information and insights on the best Bschools
than exist anywhere else.

This guidebook is an outgrowth of BUSINESSWEEK’s biennial ranking of the best business
schools, a project first tackled in 1988. Since then, the magazine has carved out management
education as an important and critical area of coverage. It’s a mission that
extends far beyond the pages of the magazine. BUSINESSWEEK Online, for example, has an
extensive site devoted to the best business schools. It includes lengthy profiles of the 82
schools surveyed by BUSINESSWEEK in 2000, featuring helpful statistics, links to schools’
Web sites, and dozens of student comments from the survey.And this year, there are even
more profiles on nonranked schools—more than 220 total B-schools, divided by geographic
region. There’s a return-on-investment calculator that helps you determine the
true costs of any one program and a host of transcripts of chats with students at the top
schools. And something more—there are dozens of video interviews with B-school
deans, admissions officers, and placement directors.You can download the transcripts of
online conferences with admissions and placement professionals, read the journals of
current and recently graduated MBA students, and post a question on a variety of message
boards to be answered by BUSINESSWEEK staffers or other visitors to the site.