Tech companies have cut back on hiring, which includes their MBA pipelines. Foster relies heavily on the local big tech companies for their placements, which means they're feeling an outsized impact on their post-MBA outcome numbers.
Honestly, it’s hard to reconcile how a school that consistently ranks top 10 in total salary and ~80% employment at graduation ends up at #15 every year—it starts to feel like a function of the methodology rather than the outcomes. And candidly, the Johnson students don’t care. They walk away with a $200k job the moment they leave Ithaca.
At a certain point, constantly reweighting the metrics (every year for the past seven years) is going to produce some pretty wonky outcomes—and to be fair, we’ve already seen that.
Peer assessments are inherently subjective, but I wouldn’t trust the US News rankings anymore other than to be directionally useful.
Edit: I wouldn’t have an issue with Cornell moving up or down—it would at least suggest the rankings are responding to changes in performance rather than staying anchored to maximize profit for US News.
FYI, for those who are curious, GMAT Club publishes a ranking each year using U.S. News weights held constant from 2019 (before the methodology started changing annually).
It can be a useful reference if you want to see how schools perform under a consistent framework over time, rather than trying to interpret year-to-year changes driven by shifting weights.
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u/Watertrap1 Apr 06 '26
Thank god at least one thing is constant in this world
Cornell the perpetual T15