Business Week ranked the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration 10th in the nation, up three places from last year, in its biennial survey of business schools.
The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School ranked first, followed by the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.
The survey, which was released this past weekend, ranked the Tuck School first in the alumni networks category and third in quickest payback on money spent to receive the MBA.
Dean of the Tuck School Paul Danos said he was pleased with the new rankings.
"It's good to be back in the top 10," he said. "We will never be satisfied until we are number one, but this is definitely a move in the right direction."
His sentiments were echoed by members of the Tuck School community.
Professor of Marketing Rohit Deshpande said, "My reaction has been guardedly positive. It's positive because we moved up but guarded because we still should have done a lot better."
Professor of Management Kenneth Baker said although the rise in the rankings is a positive sign, "I take it with a grain of salt. We don't really focus on doing things that can make us higher or lower in the rankings."
Tuck student Ying Shiau said she felt the Tuck School should have done even better in the rankings.
"The quality of education is excellent. I think the rankings have a lot to do with public relations and some schools are more active in getting public coverage," Shiau said. "We're sort of a sleepy school in that regard."
Shiau said she does not worry about the rankings affecting her ability to get a job after graduation.
"I don't think that many companies pay a lot of attention to it," Shiau said.
Controversial survey history
The Tuck School had been ranked sixth in 1992 before the seven spot drop in the 1994 survey. The large fall in the 1994 survey was attributed largely to the controversial resignation of former Dean of the Tuck School Edward Fox.
The former Dean resigned after he was denied a second four-year term by a committee headed by College President James Freedman.
According to Business Week's 1994 issue, Fox's resignation "exposed students to what they called the 'petty politics' of a few outspoken faculty members who wrote critical letters about the dean to the president."
Deshpande blamed poor communication between the administration and the student body for the students' dissatisfaction after Fox's resignation.
"I spoke to several students who actually filled out the surveys for Business Week. At the time they filled out the surveys, they did not have much information about the reasons for the decision not to reappoint Fox," Deshpande said.
Tuck students "told me that if they knew [then] what they know now, they would not have filled out the forms in the same way," he said.
A poor satisfaction rating was the main cause of the drop in the 1994 rankings, according to the 1994 Business Week article.
Tuck Communications Director Paul Argenti said the large ranking drop in 1994 was "a devastating thing to any institution," in a 1994 interview with The Dartmouth.
Recovery
Danos said he was not at all surprised at the school's recovery from the 1994 survey.
"The Tuck School certainly deserves to be at the top of any ranking scheme," Danos said. "Anyone who ranks it as 13 just does not know the business."
Danos added the Tuck School is, "among the best in the things that count, such as the students, learning environment and alumni career success."
Much of the Tuck School's rise in the rankings may be a result of the improvement in the career placement office.
Business Week Staff Editor David Leonhardt called Tuck's placement office "the most improved placement office of any school over the past two years."
"No area of the school has improved more in the past two years," he said. "Tuck students see the placement office as one of the best in the country."
Alumni satisfaction
Danos said he took extra pride in Dartmouth's number one ranking Business Week's listing of the best business school alumni networks.
According to the article, 63 percent of Tuck alumni donate to the school, "the highest level of support for any graduate business school in the world."
Danos said he views the high alumni network ranking as a long-term student satisfaction survey, which he believes is a greater indicator of the success of the school than the surveys taken in 1994, which measure student satisfaction at one point in time.
"Our being number one in alumni loyalty and support shows that when Tuck graduates look back on their careers, they want to support their alma mater," he said. "To me, that is the most gratifying part of the survey."
Leonhardt believes the environment at the Tuck School is responsible for the incredible strength of the alumni network.
"Tuck fosters a collegial atmosphere and makes its students feel like they are part of a community," Leonhardt said.
"They really feel that they get their money's worth and this is reflected in the incredible alumni network."
The Tuck School ranked third in quickest payback on a master of business administration degree. Tuck alumni take an average of 5.1 years to repay their total investment in their MBA, according to the survey.
Business Week calculates the total investment students put into business school education as "two years of lost earnings plus the pre-tax income needed to pay the tuition."
The Tuck School ranked only behind the University of Pittsburgh and Brigham Young University in this category, placing it number one among Business Week's top 25 schools.
Future rankings
Because of the system used by Business Week to compute the rankings, it will be difficult for Dartmouth to move towards the top five in the overall rankings, at least in the next few years, Danos said.
"Since the system uses the old student satisfaction numbers for three cycles (six years), the 1994 rankings which caused Tuck to drop in the first place will be factored in the 1998 survey as well," he said.
The technology program, which Danos called "the world's best" is seen as a key to propelling the Tuck School further up the rankings, he said.
"I have no doubt that we will deserve to be number one in the near future," Danos said. "We are solidly a top five school and we will be number one as long as we stick to our basic goals, beliefs and strategies."
Leonhardt, who was responsible for much of the business school rankings issue, predicts that Dartmouth will continue to rise in future surveys.
"The new administration is doing some good things. The 1998 survey is more likely to be a repeat of this year's success than of the lower numbers seen in 1994," he said.
"If I were a student looking at Dartmouth, I would see its tremendous national reputation and a dean doing good things," Leonhardt said. "I would be excited."
Mechanics of the ranking process
The magazine compiled the rankings using information gained from graduates of the various schools and corporate recruiters who are responsible for hiring the graduates, according to the Business Week article.
The Business Week survey differs greatly from the rankings put out by US News and World Report because the US News and World Report does not survey students or recruiters according to Leonhardt.
"US News relies on statistics like test scores and yield percentage to compute their rankings," Leonhardt said. "The key to our methodology is we rely solely on the surveys of both students and corporate recruiters."
While US News and World Report does survey the deans of the schools for their rankings of the reputations of the other schools, their rankings are much more number based, according to Leonhardt. This leads to a significant discrepancy between the two sets of rankings.
In the Business Week survey, randomly chosen members of the nationwide MBA Class of 1996 received surveys consisting of 36 questions. Business Week used the 67 percent of surveys returned to them and combined that with responses from the 1994 and 1992 poles.
Of the 326 companies surveyed, 70 percent responded. The recruiters were "asked to name a Top 10, in order, based on the quality of the schools and their company's success with the grads," according to the article.
Ratings were adjusted upward for some of the smaller schools in order "to account for any possible large-school bias."
