September 6, 2005

Johnson School Ranks Ninth

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Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management (JGSM) came in ninth in Forbes Magazine’s recent rankings of America’s best business schools. The ranking is up from Forbes’ last survey two years ago, which placed Cornell at 11th.

Cathy Dove, associate dean of JGSM, said that although she is pleased with the Forbes’ rankings, she recognizes that they are imperfect. “Year-to-year fluctuations in the rankings are not necessarily an indication of true changes of relative rankings between business schools,” she said in an e-mail. “Ultimately our goal is to earn and sustain a long-term reputation as a top business school.”

Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business was ranked as the top business school in the country, followed by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business, the Columbia University Business School, the Yale School of Management and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, respectively. This is the first year that the Forbes survey has not given its top slot to the Harvard Business School, which is ranked seventh for its performance over the last two years.

Dove said that the rise in JGSM’s Forbes ranking is based on the school’s newly developed programs in response to the changing marketplace.

“We have developed many new courses, continue to hire outstanding faculty, have refined and targeted our marketing, have introduced new student programming including those in career services and have been leaders in the area of diversity and inclusion,” she said.

In addition, JGSM released a five year plan in 2004 to boost its capabilities, while increasing global awareness of Cornell’s graduate business program and its unique characteristics.

Dove stressed that the business school does not create new programs to improve its rankings, “[but] when we succeed in our goals, we believe the rankings will reflect that success,” she said.

For the past eight years, Forbes Magazine has biennially issued a list of the top U.S. business schools. The survey ranks schools according to their investment return, or compensation five years after graduation minus tuition and the forgone salary during school. Forbes sent surveys to 25,000 alumni of 111 business programs around the world and received results from 24 percent of them. The surveys asked the alumni for their pre-M.B.A salaries and incomes for three of their first five years after receiving their degrees. Forbes then compared the income they received after getting their M.B.A. with their opportunity cost, the tuition and salary they would have made while in school and their salary if they had stayed at their previous jobs.

Forbes Magazine also ranks the top non U.S. business schools and best part time M.B.A programs.

Archived article by Olivia Oran
Sun Staff Writer