The Top Business Schools- A New Winner

THE TOP BUSINESS SCHOOLS

A New Winner
Wharton jumped to the top of our third annual survey of business schools, from fifth place last year. And that wasn’t the only surprise.

By RONALD ALSOP
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The world’s oldest business school took top honors in this year’s Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive ranking of corporate recruiters’ favorite M.B.A. programs.

The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, founded in 1881, jumped to first place from fifth last year, largely on the strength of students’ financial and analytical skills. Wharton unseated Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, which slipped to No. 2 after two consecutive years as the most popular M.B.A. program.

This year’s survey reflected the new era of financial and ethical accountability. Recruiters repeatedly praised schools that produce principled graduates and accounting whizzes. The Wharton School is a leader in both areas, with a long history of business-ethics courses and research and some of the top professors in the accounting field. In fact, recruiters named Wharton the second-best school for accounting, after the University of Chicago.

Wharton continues to attract the premier investment-banking and management-consulting recruiters, even in this weak M.B.A. job market. "Our track record at Wharton is one of unparalleled success," says Frank Pometti, a management consultant at A.T. Kearney Inc. "It’s critical as a consultant to understand what’s driving a company’s financial performance, and you never have to worry about a Wharton student getting it."
RECRUITERS’ SCORECARD
See highlights from The Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive survey of corporate recruiters on business schools. (Acrobat required)

BREAKDOWN

1. University of Pennsylvania

2. Dartmouth College

3. University of Michigan

4. Northwestern University

5. University of Chicago

6. Carnegie Mellon University

7. Columbia University

8. Harvard University

9. Yale University

10. Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The Rating Criteria: See what criteria recruiters considered "very important."

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The Rating Criteria

Recruiters in The Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive survey rated each business school on these student and school attributes. Here is the percentage of recruiters who said each attribute is "very important."

Attribute % Very Important

Communication and interpersonal skills 90%

Ability to work well within a team 87

Analytical and problem-solving skills 85

Personal ethics and integrity (1) 84

Quality of past hires 81

Leadership potential 75

Fit with the corporate culture 74

Strategic thinking 67

Likelihood of recruiting "stars" — that is, graduates who are very likely to be promoted within the company 64

Student "chemistry" — that is, the general like or dislike you have of the students overall 49

Willingness of students to relocate to the job location you require 49

Original and visionary thinking 47

Retention rate of past hires 37

Content of the core curriculum 35

Overall value for the money invested in the recruiting effort 34

Students’ average number of years of work experience 34

General management point of view 32

School "chemistry" — that is, the general like or dislike you have of the school overall 32

Entrepreneurial skills 27

Career-services office at the school 26

Past acceptance rate of job offers from students at the school 26
Faculty expertise 25

Strong international perspective 24

Awareness of corporate-citizenship issues such as social and environmental responsibility 18

Overall satisfaction with the school in terms of meeting your M.B.A. recruiting needs N.A. (2)

Likelihood of returning to school for future recruiting needs N.A. (2)

(1) New attribute in 2003

(2) Recruiters weren’t asked to rate the importance of the last two attributes on the list.

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While survey respondents praise Wharton as a superb training ground for ambitious leaders and strategic thinkers, some consider the school’s culture too competitive and elitist. Virtually all of the recruiters, however, appreciate Wharton’s academic prowess. It was among the top 10 nominees for excellence in every academic concentration in the Journal survey except for information technology.

Some scholastic stars, however, didn’t fare well in the Journal ranking because recruiters care about more than the quality of the faculty and curriculum. They also highly value such attributes as students’ communication and interpersonal skills and the level of service they receive from the career-services office.

Stanford University, for example, ranked 30th overall, even though recruiters placed it among the top 10 schools for five academic specialties. Stanford did move up significantly in the overall ranking, jumping from 39th place last year. Several recruiters noted improvements at Stanford’s career-management office since Andy Chan took over as director, and they also observed more humility among students hungry for jobs. But Stanford clearly still suffers from the negative reputation it acquired during the booming 1990s when many students snubbed traditional recruiters in favor of sexier dot-coms and other technology start-ups.

This year’s ranking is based on an online survey of 2,191 recruiters between November 2002 and March 2003. Respondents could rate only schools they know well through their recent recruiting experiences. Each respondent rated one to three business schools on 26 attributes, including students’ analytical and problem-solving skills, personal ethics and integrity, leadership potential, and fit with the corporate culture.

In addition, a school’s final score and ranking took into account its "mass appeal," based on how many survey respondents recruited from its M.B.A. program. Mass appeal reflects the size of a school’s recruiter network, an important factor for students seeking a broad range of career opportunities.

For the second year, big business schools like Wharton made a much stronger showing than small M.B.A. programs. Seven of the top 10 schools offer large M.B.A. programs, and half of the top 10 are part of the Ivy League.

In addition to Wharton, two other Ivy League schools moved up in this year’s ranking. Columbia University’s business school advanced three spots to No. 7. "Columbia students tend to be interesting and well-rounded, and there’s an international flavor to the M.B.A. program," says Mr. Pometti. "You want people who can relate to consulting clients in any situation, including multicultural settings." The largest Ivy League M.B.A. program, Harvard Business School, moved up one notch to eighth place, but it still stirs mixed feelings with many recruiters, who repeatedly cite students’ arrogance as its chief shortcoming.

Mass Appeal

Some big schools ranked higher because they scored well on mass appeal. The weak job market also has clearly affected recruiters’ feelings about some of the large M.B.A. programs. Recruiters who visited the bigger schools, particularly the most prestigious programs, reported greater success in hiring students and more considerate treatment from both the graduates and the career-services office during the 2002-03 academic year.

But one large school — the University of Texas at Austin — dropped out of the top 10 this year for the first time. Some recruiters cited inconsistent performance from Texas graduates they had hired recently.

The biggest decliners in this year’s ranking include New York University, Escuela Superior de Administracion y Direccion de Empresas (ESADE) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Many recruiters commented that student quality is "uneven" at NYU’s Stern School of Business and that they sometimes feel as if they are interviewing "Columbia rejects." As for Spain’s ESADE and Illinois, recruiters called for more student work experience and a stronger international perspective at both schools.

FIND OUT MORE
See how all the schools ranked in a broad spectrum of categories in "The Wall Street Journal Guide to the Top Business Schools, 2004," a Wall Street Journal Book, published by Free Press and available at http://www.WSJbooks.com.

Schools making the biggest advances in the ranking: Brigham Young University, Vanderbilt University, and Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM). Brigham Young’s Marriott School of Management stood out for its students’ integrity in this era of corporate scandals. "Our recruiters return to Brigham Young year in and year out because of the school’s high ethical standards," says Roger McCarty, corporate strategy development leader for Dow Chemical Co.

Recruiters singled out Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management for its finance program and its graduates’ strong character and team orientation. And Mexico’s ITESM, which topped the list of international schools in this year’s ranking, earned kudos for its students’ strategic thinking and analytical skills, as well as its global vision. "I’ve been working with ITESM graduates for the past 10 years," says Francisco Trevino Reyes, administration manager at the New Zealand Milk Distribution Center in Monterrey, Mexico. "Believe me, you can rely on the quality of their work, decision making, ethical values and leadership."

Top International Schools

This year, for the first time, The Wall Street Journal and Harris Interactive created a separate ranking of the top 10 international schools. It includes the six foreign schools from the overall top 50, plus four others that received at least 20 recruiter ratings — the minimum number required — but didn’t score high enough to make the main ranking. Two Mexican schools top the international ranking, while Europe places six schools on the list. Two Canadian M.B.A. programs round out the international leaders.

Surprisingly, INSEAD dropped out of the top 50 and ranked only ninth among the international schools. Some recruiters complained that graduates of the French school lack depth of knowledge because they complete the degree in just one year instead of the usual two years. The students also "are too arrogant," a survey respondent said. "They’re not as good as they think they are." Another well-known international program — IMD International in Lausanne, Switzerland — also fell out of the ranking this year. An extremely small school with only about 90 full-time M.B.A. students, it failed to receive the minimum number of recruiter ratings to be eligible for this year’s rankings.

Other schools that dropped out of the top 50 altogether in 2003: the University of Western Ontario, University of Toronto, University of California at Davis, University of Wisconsin, Boston College and University of California at Irvine.

This year’s newcomers to the top 50 include the University of Pittsburgh, University of Florida, American University, University of Denver, Boston University, Texas A&M University and HEC School of Management. In addition, the University of Minnesota returned to the ranking after a one-year absence.

Pittsburgh’s Katz Graduate School of Business placed highest among the schools making their debut in The Wall Street Journal ranking. Unlike INSEAD, Pitt is popular with some recruiters because of its fast-track one-year M.B.A. degree. "Pitt’s one-year program is more indicative of the fast rate of learning required in the workplace, where you don’t have two years to get up to speed," says Lawrence Lane, a finance supervisor at Ford Motor Co. "Pitt is also a good fit with the Ford culture of teamwork."

On a regional basis, U.S. business schools in the East and Midwest claimed 14 of the top 20 spots. Four Southern schools were among the 20, but Western schools fared poorly again. No Western schools made the top 20 in the first ranking, and the only one to do so in 2002 and 2003 was the University of California at Berkeley, in 14th place this year.

Private universities, as usual, dominate the rankings. But public business schools, led by the University of Michigan and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, represent 40% of the top 50. "We like North Carolina because the students have a solid professionalism and sense of leadership — they’re very confident and assured," says Zohar Porat, who works in strategic marketing at Eli Lilly & Co. "They’re also delightful people, and that’s unusual for M.B.A.s."

— Mr. Alsop, a Wall Street Journal news editor, served as editor of the new book "The Wall Street Journal Guide to the Top Business Schools 2004" and as contributing editor of this report.

Write to Ronald Alsop at [email protected]