"It doesn't surprise me or concern me to jump around in the top ten," Tuck School Dean Paul Danos said. "I would say that I never just look at one of these rankings, I look at them all and think about it in total because I could never guess where a school is going to come out. This is the best year we've ever had if you look at the six major published rankings of MBA programs combined."
In a compilation of the U.S. News, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist Intelligence Unit, Forbes and Business Week ratings, Tuck ranks second in the country, just behind the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton. Forbes and The Wall Street Journal both ranked Tuck first, The Economist has it in second place, and the Financial Times rates Tuck seventh in the United States and eighth in the world.
"I would say that being in the top 10 of 5000 MBA programs worldwide is excellent," Danos said. "We've been pretty fortunate that the rankings are high and we don't get bent out of shape bouncing around a little bit."
U.S. News based its scoring on both a quality assessment, placement success and student selectivity, which were weighted 40 percent, 35 percent and 25 percent respectively.
Within the quality assessment component, peer assessment scores, which accounted for 25 percent of the total score, were given the most consideration. The publication examined graduates' mean starting salaries and bonuses, as well as their employment rates. Finally, mean GMAT scores and undergraduate GPA complemented the magazine's weighting of acceptance rate.
Danos explained that different publications use a mix of criteria to determine their rankings. The Wall Street Journal, for example, relies on surveys of employers to determine the quality of graduates' work. Other publications look heavily at the quality of student experience, a field in which Tuck performs particularly well.
According to Danos, the scores used to sort top schools often differ by less than one percent.
Tuck appeared for the first time this year in U.S. News' list of schools with excellent commitment to the nonprofit sector, ranking 10th, and placed fifth in the general management category, up from sixth last year. This portion of the ranking is based solely on ratings by educators at peer schools.
Danos cited the recently developed Allwin Initiative for Corporate Citizenship as a main factor in its nonprofit recognition.
"We have put more emphasis on non-for-profit exposure for students," he said. "We also do our ethics work in that Initiative."
Additionally, many students take internships at non-profit organizations, and graduates often serve on those organizations' boards. Projects the school has undertaken, such as helping to build and develop a hospital and pharmacy in Tanzania, also help Tuck's reputation in this sector.
The Thayer School of Engineering placed 42nd in the magazine's overall raking of graduate engineering schools, fifth in acceptance rate, and 20th in average GRE scores.
"I don't think [being ranked 42nd] is an accurate reflection of what we do here, but given the approach and the formula it's remarkable that a school this size does as well as we do," Thayer Dean Joseph Helble said. "When you scale it for size, you get a true picture of where we stand nationally."
The formula that U.S. News uses gives weight to the number of total Ph.D.s and total research expenditures, figures that are far lower at Thayer than at large university engineering schools, according to Helble.
Helble said the rankings may play an important role in attracting international students, since these students do not have as much direct contact with the school and often rely on rankings in choosing where to apply.
He also said that despite the ranking, Thayer has been ahead of the curve in its programs.
"We don't have departments; we're an integrated engineering school. Everyone talks about the interdiscplinary approach being trendy, but we've had that for 50 years by having everyone teach and collaborate," Helble said.
