The Sloan School of Management has achieved its highest ranking yet in Business Week's biannual survey of the best business schools, zipping up three slots from the 1992 poll to reach number 10 in results reported in the magazine's October 24 issue.
"Breaking into the top 10 in this particular survey is a major step forward on the path to preeminence, and it reinforces the need to succeed in our program of customer satisfaction," said Dean Glen L. Urban, who has set the school on a course to become recognized as the best business school in the world. Just last March, US News and World Report found Sloan to be number two in its annual survey-a mere fraction of a point behind top-ranked Stanford.
Each of the growing number of business-school rankings has its own particular focus and methodology. Business Week relied on a 36-question survey sent to 6,353 randomly selected 1994 graduates from 44 top schools. Another questionnaire went to 354 organizations who recruit MBAs. The graduate response rate was 73 percent, and 72 percent of the recruiters responded.
Among recruiters, Sloan graduates got the highest marks for their analytical abilities, helping the school achieve ninth place overall in the corporate rankings.
Sloan's curriculum rated a "B" from graduates, up from a "C" in previous years. A dramatically revamped core curriculum, designed with input from the class of '94, has already been implemented for the class of '95. The effects of these innovations are delayed by the fact that graduate survey results from the current year receive a 50 percent weighting, balanced by 25 percent weightings on each of the two previous surveys.
"All this bodes well for the future," Dean Urban said. "The new curriculum, the organizational reengineering in progress at Sloan, the increasing student satisfaction and rising ratings in these various polls all show that we are moving in the right direction."
Several other key initiatives are under way to help Sloan move into a premier position in global business education. These include the construction of the new Tang Center, the creation of a joint degree with the School of Engineering on System Design and Management, the development of state-of-the-art remote education programs, and the expansion of the School's diverse international initiatives into China.
In other results, the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School shot up from fourth place in 1992 to place first this year, knocking three-time winner Northwestern (Kellogg) down to second. Others in the top ten were Chicago (3), Stanford (4), Harvard (5), Michigan (6), Indiana (7), Columbia (8) and UCLA (9).
A version of this article appeared in the October 19, 1994 issue of MIT Tech Talk (Volume 39, Number 8).
