Companies now favoring big business schools: WSJ rankings takes pulse of corporate recruiters - Update

University Business, Oct, 2002 by Tim Goral

'Tis the season for college rankings. Whether it's the top academic choices or the top party schools, someone, somewhere has a list. But one list has a lot of people talking: the Wall Street Journal's Top Business Schools ranking.

Now in its second year, the list is based on what corporate recruiters think of the nation's business schools and their graduates. "We take this approach because we believe what recruiters think is of the highest importance to prospective and current MBA students," says Ron Alsop, the Journal editor who conducted the survey with Harris Interactive. "After art, [the students] return to business school to improve their career prospects; they hope to graduate with a better job and salary. Therefore, it is extremely valuable for prospective students to know how recruiters feel about the different schools, as they decide where to apply."

Dartmouth's Tuck Business School took top honors for the second straight year, but Alsop says that is an exception to the current trend: the bigger, elite business schools generally muscled out the smaller MBA programs this time. (Tuck was followed by U Michigan, Carnegie Melon, Northwestern U, and University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, which ranked a disappointing 18 in last year's poll).

Alsop attributes the big-school shift to changes in the job market and balance of power between recruiters and grads. With a greatly reduced corporate presence on campuses, many recruiters said they found top students at many of the most prestigious schools more open to reasonable compensation packages. "What surprised me most was that recruiters still found some schools and their students to be arrogant and demanding, despite the dismal job market," he told University Business.

The poll is a hit with the newspaper's readers, as well as with the schools themselves, Alsop says. "Even schools that dropped in the ranking aren't reacting negatively. While disappointed, they are interested in teaming why they fell in the ranking and how they may need to improve."