The 2005 Wall Street Journal MBA rankings are now available. This survey is always viewed with a bit of skepticism by readers due to its somewhat unusual focus. Where other surveys incorporate feedback from students, recruiters and the academic community – coupled with admissions statistics (GPA, GMAT, yield, etc) – the WSJ focuses purely on what recruiters have to say. This results in a ranking that is indeed very different from the likes of BusinessWeek, the Financial Times, US News, etc.
Without further ado, here is a partial listing of the rankings (see the Journal’s site for all the details):
National Ranking
1. Dartmouth (Tuck)
2. University of Michigan (Ross)
3. Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper)
4. Northwestern (Kellogg)
5. Yale University
6. University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
7. UC Berkeley (Haas)
8. Columbia University
9. University of North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler)
10. University of Southern California
11. University of Virginia (Darden)
12. MIT (Sloan)
13. University of Chicago
14. Harvard University
15. Stanford University
Regional Ranking
1. Purdue University (Krannert)
2. Michigan State University(Broad)
3. Ohio State University (Fisher)
4. Thunderbird (Garvin)
5. IPADE
International Ranking
1. IMD
2. ESADE
3. Carnegie Mellon (Tepper)
4. IPADE
5. London Business School
While the rankings are always fun to debate, we’d like to call your attention to a very interesting article that accompanies this year’s WSJ report. The article is titled The Full Time Advantage. Written by the Ron Alsop, this piece examines recruiters preference for full-time MBA students and argues that despite the increasing popularity of part-time and executive MBA options, the full-time degree still reigns supreme.
Also of note alongside the rankings and the various articles is a podcast from Ron Alsop, where he discusses the recent declines in application volume, positive outlook on the recruiter/employment front and how schools have been juggling these trends.
