In response to a recent ranking of top graduate business schools in the United States published by U.S. News & World Report (March 10, 1997), the director of one of the recognized programs would like to know which variables are most strongly associated with a school’s overall score. Ideally, she hopes to use an enhanced understanding of the ranking scheme to improve her program’s score in the forthcoming years and thus please both external and internal constituents. The data are in the file P2_8.XLS.

a. Use scatterplots to provide her with an indication of the measures that are most strongly related to the overall score in the U.S. News & World Report ranking.

b. Generally, how can she and her administrative colleagues proceed to improve their program’s ranking in forthcoming publications?