The Wharton School remained in fourth place for the second year straight in Bloomberg Businessweek’s rankings of undergraduate business schools, released on March 4. However, Wharton administrators say these rankings may not be accurate.
“It seems that the inaccuracy lies in the employer satisfaction results,” Vice Dean of the Wharton Undergraduate Division Georgette Phillips said, referring to the category in which Wharton experienced the biggest drop this year. “We are mystified with how they came up with the results.”
According to Businessweek, the publication used nine factors to evaluate undergraduate programs, including a survey of corporate recruiters, the academic quality of each program and post-graduate incomes.
Although Wharton was ranked with the highest median starting salary, it dropped from sixth place last year to the 21st in the recruiter satisfaction survey.
The recruiter satisfaction statistic is what has brought Wharton’s results down in the past few years, Phillips said. However, there is “no way that our employers can be as dissatisfied as the results seem to indicate. Employers who hire our students are very satisfied,” Phillips said.
Phillips hypothesized that the low employer satisfaction rating might be because Businessweek asks many Fortune 500 companies and accounting firms to participate in their survey. Since the majority of Wharton students choose to pursue careers in financial services and consulting rather than accounting, the results many have been skewed out of Wharton’s favor.
Wharton’s Communications department has contacted Businessweek to look into this perceived inconsistency between Wharton’s feedback from employers and the results from the recruiter survey.
“We’ve yet to have a satisfying answer from them,” Phillips said.
The Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame took the top spot in the Bloomberg rankings, while the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia and Goizueta Business School at Emory University ranked second and third, respectively.
“I think we should be ranked first,” Phillips said. “Academically we are clearly at the top of the heap.” However, that does not mean that Wharton will stop innovating, she said.
Although Phillips does not believe the Businessweek rankings to be a transparent ranking system, she cited the U.S. World and News Report, where Wharton’s undergraduate business program is ranked first, as a source of college rankings that is very transparent.
“I read some information on the U.S. News and World Report website to learn more about the schools I hadn’t visited,” said Danielle Kohn, a senior at Millburn High School in Millburn, N.J., and a regular decision applicant.
“I do think college rankings greatly influence which schools students apply to,” said Rosemary Stalter, a professional SAT Reasoning Test tutor, adding that, “at times I think the data is skewed and biased based on who’s performing the task.”
However, “a drop in rank by a few places is not going to change many students’ minds,” Stalter added.
“Rankings cannot tell a student if the college’s environment or academic program is right for him or her,” said Suzanne Rossi, who owns the college-counseling business Rock Your Future.
“A student should look at a school and think, ‘Do I see myself here?,’ rather than rely on rankings like Businessweek’s,” Phillips said.
