Rankings are out again.
Not only has Business Week released its annual list of top business schools, but U.S. News and World Report has issued a new ranking of colleges based on best value.
In Business Week, the Johnson School of Management maintained its holding on the number eight spot in overall rankings, while scoring as high as second in the subcategories of faculty accessibility and networking connections.
Last year, the business school jumped to eighth from 18th. Business Week attributed the improvement to new administrators at the helm.
“We held our position; that makes it a major achievement,” said Robert J. Swieringa, dean of the business school. “Usually the people who move up fall back down.”
Business schools draw an older admissions pool and the average age at Cornell is 29, according to Business Week. “They’re very careful applicants,” Swieringa said.
Business Week called attention to Cornell’s reconstructed building, wireless networking and the Parker Center for Investment Research. Students surveyed in the article praised the faculty.
“The major thing that they’re doing in the business school is improving faculty responsiveness,” said Prof. Ronald Ehrenberg, labor economics.
Last year’s jump in the rankings saw a “dramatic increase” in applications for the business school. “Students are very interested in reputation,” Swieringa said. “That’s a very competitive market.”
The top three spots in the rankings went to University of Pennsylvania (Wharton), Northwestern and Harvard.
U.S. News and World Report news rankings this year were based on a ratio of quality to price. Cornell took the tenth spot, tied with the University of Pennsylvania, University of Chicago, Columbia, University of Austin-Texas and University of Virginia.
The magazine looked at the school’s ranking in the survey of America’s Best Colleges, percentage of all students receiving financial aid, and the average percentage of tuition covered by financial aid.
However, with California Institute of Technology, Harvard and Rice taking the top three spots, the list is very similar to the earlier rankings released by U.S. News and World Report.
Ehrenberg observed that most of the top-rated college have comparable tuition and therefore the purpose of these new rankings is “to sell more magazines.”
Henrik N. Dullea ’61, vice president for university relations, noted that the rankings don’t always determine how the University will fare when all applications are sent.
“When our rankings dropped, we had more applications and better quality,” Dullea said, referring to a lower acceptance rate and higher yield this year even with Cornell’s drop from sixth to eleventh.
However, Dullea noted, “We offered substantially fewer offers this year [by several hundred] in order to meet the 3000 target. … That will account for us positively in next year’s rankings.”
Archived article by Beth Herskovits