Wharton Earns Top Marks for Third Year

L.A. Times Archives

Oct. 9, 1998 12 AM PT

From Associated Press

NEW YORK —

The Wharton School persevered as the No. 1 place in the nation to get a graduate business degree, while the University of Chicago was voted most improved, according to a BusinessWeek survey released Thursday.

The magazine’s survey of business school graduates and corporate recruiters placed the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School at the head of 25 schools for the third time. In the last two surveys, in 1996 and 1994, Wharton also was No. 1.

UCLA’s Anderson School ranked 12th, while USC’s Marshall School made the list for the first time, squeaking in at No. 25.

For the MBAs who graduated earlier this year, it didn’t matter which elite school they attended.

“Whatever quibbles members of the class of 1998 may have had individually, they didn’t have a lot to complain about overall,” BusinessWeek wrote.

The magazine noted that those who finished at elite schools this spring, as opposed to those there now as the global economic crisis unfolds, had “a golden ticket into a world of six-figure salaries and jobs with real responsibilities.”

Among the top five, Harvard University fell from fourth to fifth and Northwestern University climbed from third to second.

BusinessWeek conducted its survey by sending questionnaires to 9,598 graduating MBAs at 61 schools and 350 companies that actively recruit. It heard back from just over 6,000 students and nearly 260 companies.

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With Honors

UCLA and USC made the grade in BusinessWeek’s list of top 25 schools offering MBAs, based on a survey of business school graduates and corporate recruiters.

1. Univ. of Pennsylvania (Wharton), Philadelphia

2. Northwestern Univ. (Kellogg), Evanston, Ill.

3. Univ. of Chicago, Chicago

4. Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.

5. Harvard Univ., Cambridge, Mass.

6. Columbia Univ., New York

7. Duke Univ. (Fuqua), Durham, N.C.

8. Cornell Univ. (Johnson), Ithaca, N.Y.

9. Stanford Univ., Stanford, Calif.

10. Dartmouth Univ. (Tuck), Hanover, N.H.

11. Univ. Virginia (Darden), Charlottesville, Va.

12. UCLA (Anderson), Los Angeles