The Wharton graduate program's drop to No. 6 may not have been the most disappointing aspect of last week's Wall Street Journal "2005 Guide to Business Schools."
The rankings, which rely on an online survey of 3,267 recruiters, cited MBA graduates as being increasingly arrogant and self-entitled.
Some recruiters polled specifically chided Wharton graduates as "sinking in interpersonal and team-oriented culture."
But longtime recruiters and Wharton officials say that they don't get that impression from the students they work with and maintain that the relationships between recruiters and MBAs are strong.
Director of MBA Career Management Christopher Morris said that complaints from recruiters are the rare exception.
Morris added that the Journal's rankings are known for being overly critical.
"They use the words 'arrogant' and 'entitled' quite liberally," he said.
While Morris does not believe the comments accurately characterize most Wharton graduates, he said this does not mean that students do not have to learn how to balance self-confidence with humility.
"They have to be aware of verbal cues [and] non-verbal cues that would send someone the perception of arrogance," he said.
Jonathan Jones, co-head of campus recruiting at Goldman Sachs, said that the Wall Street Journal rankings did not affect his perception of either the caliber of Wharton MBAs or their ability to work in teams.
"When I think of Wharton students, I certainly do not think of them as conveying a sense of entitlement," he said.
Over her 10 years of recruiting at Wharton, Citigroup recruiter Caitlin McLaughlin said that MBAs have always conducted themselves respectfully.
"I think [Wharton students] always handled themselves very professionally and very enthusiastically when dealing with myself and my organization as a whole," she said.
Director of the Wharton Graduate Division Anjani Jain feels that the Wall Street Journal guide's reports of recruiters' concerns are not necessarily indicative of the feelings of all recruiters.
"I think a lot of surveys have a great deal of noise and some signal," he said. "I try to look for what is that signal."
Noting that at one point Wharton ranked 18th one year and first the following year, Jain said schools don't actually change that radically from one year to the next and criticized the survey for being unrealistically erratic.
For first-year MBA student Stephen Brady, arrogance is not an issue among Wharton students more than at any other business school.
"No one goes around self-congratulating themselves," he said.
However, he added that "there are always individuals that will reflect poorly in a given group."
