The Tuck School of Business Administration was edged out of its usual place as one of the top 10 business schools in the country, falling four spots to 12th place in this year's U.S. News and World Report rankings.
Stanford University came out on top, followed closely by Harvard, Northwestern University and University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business all tied for second place.
Dean of the Tuck School Danos said he was concerned about the drop because "it affects how people view the business school."
"Many students view these rankings as the first indicator of value," Danos said.
Danos attributed the drop to the changes the magazine made in ranking methodology.
"We need to get [U.S. News and World Report] to either change their methodology or increase our reputation among corporations," Danos said. "Anytime we are ranked based on Tuck's size, we are at a disadvantage."
Danos said the magazine employed new statistical methodology that gave the schools a new type of raw score.
Danos also said Tuck's small scale and focus has been disadvantageous. As one component of a school's raw score, corporate recruiters who hire from Masters of Business Administration programs top ranked by U.S. News were asked to select the top 25 business programs.
While Tuck's reputation rank among academics rose by two points from 11 to nine, the reputation rank among recruiters fell four points from 13 to 17.
Danos said Dartmouth has a low reputation among these corporations because the majority of Tuck graduates enter consulting and investment banking upon graduation, fields independent from the majority of the corporations polled.
Danos also attributes the fall in ranking to Tuck's admissions policy.
"When we admit people, we don't look at board scores," he said. "We reject a lot of people with high board scores, so we don't get as much credit as we should because [the survey] only measures scores whereas we measure experience and personality."
Among the methodology for determining a business school's rank are factors such as reputation (weighted 40 percent), placement success after graduation (35 percent) and student selectivity (25 percent).
This year, signing bonuses were added to base salary as a measure of total pay, a factor which Danos said should have helped the school.
In January, a Financial Times article listed Tuck as the second business school in the world in the category of salaries for graduates. A Business Week poll last October listed Tuck as tied with the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business as having the highest percentage of students making $100,000-plus in total starting pay.
Tuck ranked sixth in the General Management specialty category. Danos said this category is Tuck's "specialty."
Danos said the slip in rankings is a "statistical blip" and "as Tuck improves, the world will recognize."
