Poll Ranks B-School Second

Harvard Business School this week placed second in a Business Week survey of the nation's top schools, but B-School students yesterday said they were unperturbed by the results.

The survey, which was released in the November 28 issue of Business Week, put Harvard behind Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management and ahead of, in order, the business schools of Dartmouth, the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell.

Business Week's poll targeted only corporate recruiters and 1988 graduates from 23 business schools, while past polls have relied on the opinions of deans and professors.

The survey sample was designed to find out "how well the schools are serving their two markets: students and their ultimate employers," according to the article accompanying the poll results. Business Week offices could not be reached yesterday.

Dartmouth, which ranked only 15th among recruiters, was named the nation's top business school by student respondents. And the same students ranked Wharton only 23rd, while corporate recruiters picked the school as the second best in the country.

Harvard came out third among recruiters and sixth among graduates. According to the article's "highlights" section, "grads say [Harvard Business School is] the most competitive, with the best connections."

B-School students interviewed yesterday called the survey unimportant, and some dubbed it "laughable."

"No one really cares," said Stuart Mieher, a first-year B-School student. "It makes good copy," he said.

Angelo Santinelli, a second-year student, said that Business Week was correct in surveying students, rather than professors and deans as in past polls, because those officials are often removed from the real learning environment.

Other students cited the poll's 42 percent response rate from both students and recruiters as another source of inaccuracy. Business Week canvassed 3000 business school graduates and 265 company recruiters.

While students generally said they consider Northwestern's business school top notch, they said that it was difficult to make distinctions among the nation's best schools.

Students said they were surprised by Stanford Business School's ninth-place finish. "It's a joke," said John Sage, a second-year Harvard student, who added that the quality of a Stanford education is comparable to that of Harvard.

Sage also said that the alumni support which the Harvard B-School offers cannot be matched by other schools. "The fact that Harvard has more CEO's than any other school by a factor of five is what is significant to me," he said.