After holding onto the top position in U.S. News and World Report's ranking of undergraduate business schools for the sixth consecutive year, Wharton is not looking back.
"We're not a program that sits on its laurels," Vice Dean of the Wharton Undergraduate Division Barbara Kahn said. "We have a lot of energy, we have a lot of innovation, and that's our culture. It's our goal to keep coming up with a pre-eminent program."
But even the most pre-eminent of institutions can fall -- or at least stumble a bit. Yale has fallen behind Princeton and Harvard in U.S. News' undergraduate university rankings. And, even more ominously, in 2002, Wharton's MBA program dropped from first to fifth after nine years in the No. 1 spot.
So will the Wharton undergraduate program ever end up ranked below any of the other 403 ranked business schools it always seems to dominate?
Even some of Kahn's peers seem to think not.
Jeff Meldman, the director of undergraduate programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's second-ranked Sloan School of Management, believes it is doubtful that Wharton will drop down anytime soon.
"I think they have been a top-rated school for as long as U.S. News and World Report has been doing the rankings. I have no reason to think that they would not continue to be in that position," he said.
On the other hand, at the University of California at Berkeley's third-ranked Haas School of Business, Director of Admissions and Operations Erika Walker feels that anything is possible in regard to the U.S. News rankings. Business schools, she said, can "easily slide, one or two, up or down."
Walker added that any system is imperfect, as is the perception of intense rivalry for the top rank.
"I think everyone would like to see [Haas] at No. 1, but I don't think it's a main driver for us. ... We just try to provide innovative teaching and curriculum among the students. It's a 'nice-to-know' kind of thing if we're ranked in the top, but I don't think it's a driver for us in the same way that most people would envision it to be."
At the same time, she said that rankings do affect a school's ability to attract top-notch students.
"We know who we're in company with. We're definitely aware of that and I think that students are aware of that," Walker said.
Although Kahn is thrilled with Wharton's first-place finish, she expressed concern that the U.S. News rankings overstate the differences among the top five schools. In addition, the U.S. News rankings do not explain what makes a business education unique, she said.
Among "the top five programs ... the difference in the ranking isn't that big. [Ranking by tier] is probably a more honest way to put it than the 1, 2, 3, 4 [rankings] that people seem to care a lot about."
U.S. News bases its rankings of undergraduate business schools entirely on peer evaluation surveys given to deans and other school officials. Kahn believes this puts rankings in the hands of people that best know what makes a great business school.
"Deans are experts, and they'll evaluate [schools] on the pedagogical values," she said.
But Meldman expressed concern that the deans' participation in the survey is inherently biased.
"People only rank the [schools] they are familiar with. It's very subjective," he said. He also feels that U.S. News should report how deans ranked individual aspects of schools.
"I think you get much more ... when you look at [individual] scores. When putting them all together, you get a loss of precision," he said.
For Wharton and Engineering sophomore Jon Reinstein, Wharton's dominance of the U.S. News rankings is a result of the lack of competitive alternatives.
"If I didn't come here, I wouldn't have majored in business because I don't think a lot of undergraduate business programs are legitimate," he said. "The only real competitor we have is MIT, and I think their niche is the quantitative aspect."
A business behemoth - Wharton's rank by 'U.S. News' in the undergraduate business school division: 1 - Number of undergraduate business schools ranked: 404 - Time at the top: At least six years - Other schools in the running: MIT's Sloan Business School (2) and UC Berkeley's Haas Business School (3)
