Business School Jumps in MBA Ranking

The McDonough School of Business moved up three spots to 30th place on the 2012 Bloomberg Businessweek list of best full-time masters of business administration programs.

The biennial rankings, released Nov. 15, were based on a weighted total of the individual rankings of student surveys, employer surveys and intellectual capital measure, according to the Businessweek website. The MSB program received individual rankings in those categories of 27th, 35th and 38th, respectively.

In addition, the school received an A, the highest possible ranking, in five criteria: career services, teaching quality, critical thinking, leadership skills and classmate caliber.

According to Businessweek, the ranking is an indication of how well the MSB serves students and corporate recruiters.

“We are very excited about this,” MSB Senior Associate Dean Elaine Romanelli said. “To be in the top 30, even at 30, means that for the next two years, we will be in the conversation. We’ve seen that after Businessweek ranks schools, it always talks about the top 30, so the difference between 30 and 31 is huge.”

This ranking is an improvement over recent years, when the MSB fell below the top 30 cutoff for the 2008 and 2010 Businessweek lists, leading to a “not ranked” designation. The school had also been listed as “not ranked” from 1988, when the ranking began, to 1998.

This the fifth time the MSB has made it into the coveted top 30 category. The school placed 26th in 2000, 30th in 2002, 25th in 2004 and 22nd in 2006.

According to Businessweek, the 2012 student rankings were based on a compilation of surveys taken in 2008, 2010 and 2012. The publication employed this method in an attempt to ensure that short-term issues, such as the construction of new facilities or unpopular deans, would not skew the overall results.

The employer survey ranking represented the quality of graduates and companies’ past experiences with them.

Romanelli said that she was encouraged by the new ranking’s implications.

“The publicity from this means that we will be able to attract more prospective students of even better quality,” she said. “We’ve got top notch people running career services, we just hired a new associate dean of admissions and we have terrific people running the program office. We also introduced a new curriculum this year, and that is going incredibly well.”

According to the MSB website, the revamped MBA curriculum, which was launched this fall, features more integrative teaching, greater rigor, an emphasis on quantitative and analytical skills and a global perspective.

Romanelli added that the MSB administration is looking to further improve its ranking.

“We’re looking at [this ranking] as the platform for a big jump in two years, so we’re working on all fronts,” she said.