Wednesday, March 4, 1998
Anderson School cracks top 10
ANDERSON: Jump makes program highest-rated of public
universities
By J. Sharon Yee
Daily Bruin Contributor
In the 1998 national report on the Best Business Schools, U.S.
News and World Report magazine ranked the Anderson Graduate School
of Management eighth.
Previously ranked 17th, the nine-point jump makes Anderson the
highest-ranked public business school in the nation.
Business schools at Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of
Pennsylvania rounded out the top five. UC Berkeley and the
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor tied for 10th.
"I am very proud of the Anderson School," said interim dean John
Mamer. "The hard work of all involved makes this school one of the
best in the nation – the faculty, students, alumni, staff and the
UCLA academic community."
Several specialized programs ranked in the top 10 as well.
The Entrepreneurship program ranked fifth, International
Business ranked sixth and the Executive Masters of Business
Administration program ranked seventh nationally.
In a recent placement survey conducted by the Career Management
Center, annual salaries for Anderson graduates averaged $75,000,
with students receiving as much as a $15,000 signing bonus.
In the past six years the school has occupied six different
slots, with the highest being 10th in 1994. This year, it shares
the eighth spot with Dartmouth University.
"The 1997 drop in rankings to seventeen was a wake-up call to
Anderson that we need to market ourselves better," said Heather
Mathis, a second-year student, who attributed the rise in ranking
to the improvement of the marketing department.
"As a result, Anderson made a deliberate effort to convey a
consistent message to the media that we are a top-10 business
school," she added.
Despite this year’s high ranking, Mamer warned against the
universality of the rankings system.
"We must resist the temptation to cater to the rankings in
planning and pursuing our intellectual and curricular goals," he
said. "If a school has the courage to change and innovate, the
standard will eventually be redefined."
"We pursued our goal of creating intellectual capital and
entrepreneurial leaders for the global information age, with little
concern for how it would impact the rankings," he continued.
"Everyone here knows the rankings need to be taken with a grain
of salt," said Jeffrey Ryskamp, an Anderson student.
"Placing too much importance on these rankings causes people to
ignore the other fine traits and specific needs that certain
schools provide," he added.
Unlike a similar survey conducted by the National Research
Council every 10 years, U.S. News and World Report collects data
and re-ranks graduate programs, including business, every one to
three years, keeping their research as current as possible.
Using a combination of statistical data and reputation data, the
programs are often assessed by data and interviews collected from
the schools themselves. The statistics usually fall into two
different categories, inputs and outputs.
Inputs consist of qualities that students bring to the education
experience, while outputs indicate the success of the program in
preparing the students for their respective fields.
In determining the criteria for ranking the nation’s three
hundred accredited MBA programs, the magazine looked to three
different areas of assessment: reputation, placement success and
student selectivity.
Criteria include administrators’ assessment of their MBA
programs, graduates’ median starting salaries, average Graduate
Management Admission Test scores and average undergraduate grade
point averages.
A high ranking will most likely cause an increase in the number
of prospective applicants and interested employers.
"Whether we want to admit it or not, rankings have a major
influence on how well Anderson recruits students, faculty and
prospective employers," said Mathis.
Ryskamp acknowledged the significance of the rankings but looked
to another reason for an increase in applications.
"Look at the weather conditions at any of the schools ranked
above or below us," he said. "Would you want to go anywhere
else?"