The Rankings Battle: A Wharton Alum Speaks Out

Recently in the press, much ado has been made over the fact that two of the top-ranked business schools, Wharton and HBS, have decided that they will not make their alumni or current students accessible to those who compile the annual or biannual rankings of business schools. Because these rankings are based on student and alumni satisfaction, in addition to opinions from recruiters and others in the business world at large, this news reverberated throughout the business school community, and has made some wonder about the future validity of these surveys. The rationale for the schools seems to center around privacy concerns, but is there a deeper meaning behind this move? And how do the alumni and students themselves feel about the rankings in general, and is this move something they applaud?

As a Wharton alumnus myself, I do wonder at the motivation for this type of action, and find it interesting coming as it does from two of the schools that are consistently ranked at the top. One wonders if, since they’ve established themselves as being at the “top of their game,” so to speak, they’re now taking themselves out of that game in order to preserve that top ranking. Does this mean that they anticipate a future drop in rankings? Or perhaps this is a reflection of the suspicion that recent surveys have seemed prone to manipulation, in that perhaps students and alumni purposely rank their schools high in all categories regardless of their actual views, just so that their alma mater can climb in the rankings. Whatever the actual motivation, it will be interesting to see if other schools follow suit, or if the lack of complete information from Wharton and HBS will effectively take them out of future rankings altogether.

As to how much students and alumni actually care about these rankings, I’d have to honestly say……not much. Sure, there’s always a bit of a thrill when one’s school is ranked #1 consistently, but there’s certainly no corresponding dismay when one’s school drops to 2 or 3, no sense of “well, so much for that Wharton degree helping me get ahead.” The top schools have a solid enough reputation behind them such that external validation from these rankings doesn’t have much of an impact. As an alumnus, my feelings are the same as they were when I was a student. I know of no Wharton alumni who feel the need to slip into conversation the fact that the school has been ranked in the top five; the name itself is enough to garner respect, as well as the notion that one knows his or her stuff, so to speak.

The bottom line is that while Donald Trump, with his love of hyperbole and superlatives, might feel compelled to proclaim that he graduated from the #1 business school in the country, the rest of us, quite frankly, are content to let the degree speak for itself.

Tasha Huebner, a Wharton 1998 graduate, is President of B-School Essays (www.bschoolessays.com), a company offering services from essay assistance to full-scale application coaching, designed to give business school applicants the best chance at getting into the school of their choice.

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