I try not to place too much emphasis on the MBA rankings. For one, I think it’s extremely difficult (or impossible) to accurately force rank schools based on quantitative data that is unlikely to effectively capture how ‘good’ a program is. To that point, choosing the right MBA program is an extremely personal decision, and includes numerous factors that cannot be captured in any ranking methodology.
With that caveat in place, I do admit to looking at the rankings when they’re published each year. Every MBA does (and if they say they don’t, they’re lying). People in business school have too much ego not to care, and it’s too great an investment of both time and money to ignore where your program ranks (at least in other peoples’ minds).
Last night a friend of mine informed me that NYU Stern rose to the #9 position in the most recent 2010 U.S. News & World Report MBA Rankings. My MBA ego was pretty pleased to see that (in case it’s not obvious, I’m poking fun at myself). Stern had been solidly ranked within the top 10 U.S. business schools by other ranking publications (#7 in both the Economist and the Financial Times) , but had been floating in the #10-11 spot in U.S. News & World Report’s rankings (arguably the most widely followed ranking) for the last couple years.
For me personally, the most satisfying aspect of the new rankings is that NYU Stern is now tied with Columbia Business School for the #9 spot. Given that my girlfriend is at Columbia, and I work with a number of CBS students through my involvement with InSITE, it feels slightly better to be on more equal footing 
2010 U.S. News & World Report MBA Rankings
1. Harvard
1. Stanford
3. MIT Sloan
4. Northwestern Kellogg
5. U Chicago Booth
5. Wharton
7. Dartmouth Tuck
7. Berkely Haas
9. NYU Stern
9. Columbia Business School
11. Yale
12. Michigan Ross
13. UVA Darden
14. Duke Fuqua
15. UCLA Anderson
