Wharton falls in rankings School drops to fourth

The Wharton School dropped two places to number four in Business Week magazine's latest rankings of the nation's top MBA programs which came out last Friday. Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management placed first for the third consecutive time in the survey, which is conducted every two years. The University of Chicago ranked second, switching spots with Wharton from the last survey. Rounding out the top five, Harvard University maintained its number three ranking while the University of Michigan jumped two, from seventh to fifth. Other Ivy League schools that were ranked in the top 20 were Dartmouth College's Amos Tuck School of Business at sixth place, Columbia University at number nine and Cornell University's Johnson School of Business at number 14. The Tuck School also took top honors in graduate students' satisfaction. Wharton Dean Thomas Gerrity said yesterday he is "pleased that they're ranking us highly," but added that the survey has "some major flaws." Gerrity questioned the "methodological base on the student survey and the subsequent interpretation." In the ranking, University graduates gave Wharton a "D" for teaching, placing it in the bottom 20 percent of that category. But Gerrity said the grades can be deceptive because the score of the top-ranked school and the lowest-ranked school in a category are often very close. He said the letter grades are determined by the magazine based on scores by graduates, and are in a sort of curve. Graduates' scores also gave Wharton an "A" for placement and a "B" for its curriculum. Wharton received straight "A"s from recruiters, who graded graduate students in three categories: analysts, team players and global view. Gerrity said that despite the fourth place ranking by Business Week, "We have . . . one of the two or three finest MBA programs in the world." He added that Wharton, Harvard and Stanford universities are "generally acknowledged" as the best overall business schools in the nation. "We know we have a great program and we're making it better and better," Gerrity said. David Reibstein, a Wharton professor who has taught at Harvard and Stanford, also said "there is very little question" that the three are the top business schools. Reibstein said that a flaw in the survey is that students rank only their own school. He said that students who attend Wharton often have higher expectations than those at other schools, and that this may affect their views. "The unfortunate part is that the students who rate Wharton don't have a basis of comparison across the other institutions," Reibstein said. He added that grouping everything into one ranking "masks all the individual differences among the schools" that tailor to students' specific needs. While Gerrity sees the survey as "superficial," deans at other ranked schools placed more importance in them. "I think academia to a considerable extent takes them very seriously," said Donald Jacobs, dean of the top-ranked Kellogg School. ""The fact is, it surveys a group of people and it . . . clearly reflects those two groups." And Michigan Dean Joseph White said, "We take [the rankings] very seriously. They have a large effect on perceptions about the quality of an institution." White admitted that the survey is "imperfect" but added that "we think they're quite carefully done." White said he was pleased that Michigan moved up two spots to be ranked in the top five. He added that Michigan is shooting for number one. "We have an established goal to be the world's best business school," White said, adding that the Business Week survey is one indicatior of that. To produce the rankings, Business Week surveyed 6,046 recent graduates from prominent business schools and 352 companies that recruit MBAs. A total of 4,712 graduates and 199 recruiters answered the questionnaires. For the first time, the magazine also included parts of the data it collected from its first two surveys, in 1988 and 1990.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.