WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Wake Forest University’s Babcock Graduate School of Management ranks second among the nation’s top regional business schools in the seventh annual ranking by The Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive Business School Survey.
In the highest ranking the school has achieved in the poll since the survey began, Babcock moved up five places to second among MBA recruiters who hire full-time business-school graduates. The survey results are available online at www.wsj.com after being published in a special section of the Wall Street Journal on Monday, Sept. 17.
“In addition to the technical and quantitative business skills that are standard at most business schools, recruiters consistently tell us that our students deliver intangibles such as strong communication skills, personal integrity, an eagerness to tackle new challenges and a teamwork mentality that enables them to roll up their sleeves to solve business challenges,” said Andy Dreyfuss, director of Babcock’s Career Management Center. “Additionally, our Career Management Center staff work extremely hard to ensure that students and companies are appropriately matched.”
The survey ranks the top 51 regional U.S. business schools, the top 19 national business schools and the top 25 international business schools. It is based on interviews with 4,430 recruiters and was conducted online between Dec. 19, 2006, and March 23, 2007.
The full-time MBA programs were rated on 21 attributes, which include students’ strategic thinking and leadership potential as well as their previous work experience, the faculty and curriculum, and the career-services office. Recruiters said in the survey that the attributes that matter most to them are interpersonal and communication skills, a teamwork orientation,personal ethics and integrity, analytical and problem-solving abilities combined with a strong work ethic.
The ranking components in the seventh annual survey include three elements: perceptions of the school and its students on the 21 attributes; future plans to recruit at the school and hire its graduates based on two attributes, also known as supportive behavior; and mass appeal, or the number of recruiters indicating that they recruit from the school.
Only schools with traditional full-time programs that graduated at least 50 students from those programs in 2006 were eligible for the survey, according to The Wall Street Journal. To qualify for a ranking, a school needed a minimum of 20 recruiter ratings.
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