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PRESS RELEASE
Back to last visited page| The Wall Street Journal honours IMD with top spot in its ranking of international MBA programs | |
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| Date - Location | 23 September 2004 - Lausanne, Switzerland |
| Area of Interest | Programs (MBA) |
| Text | The International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland (IMD), has taken top honours in the inaugural ranking of the top International M.B.A. programs compiled by The Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive. The full results, including listings of top North American schools, are published today in all three print editions of The Wall Street Journal (U.S, Europe and Asia), as well as online at www.wsj.com The London Business School was ranked second and Spain's Escuela Superior de Administracion y Direccion de Empresas (ESADE) third in the International rankings. The new International list ranks business schools that have a global reach in their job-placement activities, attracting recruiters from a mix of different countries, and forms part of The Wall Street Journal Guide to Business Schools: Recruiters' Top Picks published today. The survey of 2,849 M.B.A. recruiters was conducted online between Dec. 2, 2003 and March 31, 2004: respondents rated only full-time programs where they had recent recruiting experience. To qualify for ranking, a school had to receive at least 20 recruiter rankings. In all, 71 schools were ranked. As in previous years, The Wall Street Journal rankings of M.B.A. programs remain essentially a reflection of how appealing a business school is to recruiters: the buyers of M.B.A. talent. But the methodology has been revamped to reflect differences in M.B.A. recruiting activity among the schools, resulting in three separate rankings this year. Besides the 'International' rankings (which includes 13 North American schools and eight European M.B.A. programs), there are two covering schools only in North America:
Like the North American rankings, the International list is based on how schools rate with recruiters on different qualitative attributes, such as students' leadership, teamwork, interpersonal and analytical skills, and on 'supportive behaviour' (the likelihood that a respondent will continue recruiting from a school and make a job offer to its students in the next two years). Where the International and North American rankings differ is on 'mass appeal'. In the North American rankings, the mass-appeal score is based on the number of survey respondents who say they recruit from a particular school. For the International ranking, mass appeal is the number of countries from which a school attracts recruiters. Respondents from at least four countries must say they have recruited from a school in order for it to qualify for this ranking. Of the eight European business schools in the International ranking, four really stood out primarily because of the diversity of recruiters they attract. London Business School, which is especially well regarded by financial-services companies, attracted recruiters from 15 countries in the survey: the most of any school. IMD followed with 12. But London Business School, IMD, HEC School of Management in Paris and Spain's ESADE also scored better than many of the U.S. schools on supportive behaviour and specific attributes, particularly their students' international knowledge and experience. Small is best: IMD takes top spot IMD, a boutique management school in Lausanne, admits around 90 students each year to its 10-month pressure-cooker M.B.A. program. Recruiters liked the students' maturity and global perspective, giving IMD high scores for students' international knowledge and experience, leadership potential, personal ethics and integrity, strategic thinking and well-roundedness. It was placed first for perception ratings. "We need business leaders, and what sets IMD students apart is a mature self-awareness and greater depth of managerial experience," says Pim van Wesel, business-development manager in Switzerland for Medtronic Inc. He went on to say that they bring "a grounding in real life, not simply academics." Commenting on the rankings, director of the IMD International M.B.A. program, Sean Meehan, said: "The Wall Street Journal's focus on recruiters specifically is particularly helpful because recruiters provide the ultimate market test of M.B.A. programs. We firmly believe that prospective M.B.A. candidates should hear their view." "It's great to see our investments in our admissions and placement processes so publicly acknowledged. Our commitment to all recruiters is to continue to focus on these basics - one best group of 90; unrivalled focus on leadership development; and a real world experience providing unprecedented challenge." Being multilingual is also an asset Some schools received kudos for encouraging students to be multilingual. Spain's ESADE stipulates that part of the M.B.A. curriculum includes knowing two languages (English and Spanish) by graduation. Recruiters also gave the Spanish school high grades for students' ability to work well in teams, fit in with the corporate culture, and personal ethics and integrity, and they ranked it first with 'overall satisfaction' in meeting their needs. Ranking of the Top International Schools This ranking includes European and North American schools that have a global pool of recruiters. It is based on how recruiters rated each school on 20 different attributes, their future plans to recruit students from the school, and the number of countries from which the school draws recruiters. To be eligible for the ranking, a school needed respondents from at least four countries to say in the survey that they had recruited there recently.
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| About this survey | This is the fourth annual Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive survey of business schools. This year the survey methodology was revamped, resulting in three separate rankings:
The survey of 2,849 M.B.A. recruiters was conducted online between Dec. 2, 2003, and March 31, 2004, with respondents rating only schools where they said they had recent recruiting experience. To qualify for any of the three rankings, a school had to receive at least 20 recruiter ratings. The new approach retains most of the elements of the original methodology used in the Journal's three previous M.B.A. rankings, including recruiters' perceptions of the schools and students on 20 key attributes, such as leadership potential, teamwork skills and interpersonal qualities, and the school's "mass appeal," or the number of recruiters that it attracts. A revised and expanded part of the ranking formula is "supportive behavior," defined as the recruiters' intention to return to a particular school and the likelihood of making job offers to its graduates in the next two years. What has changed most is the calculation used to arrive at each of rankings. It was revised to give equal weight to perception, mass appeal and supportive behavior because the old formula resulted in a ranking that was increasingly driven by the mass-appeal factor. In essence, the ranking was becoming more a reflection of the size of the school and its recruiter pool than of recruiters' feelings about the school and its students. With the methodology changes, says Joy Marie Sever, senior vice president at Harris Interactive Inc., "the value of the results increases. Schools can see where they cluster and which schools they're competing with; recruiters can learn about other schools in their recruiting cluster; and prospective students can more easily compare their short list of potential schools with one another." |
| About the Wall Street Journal | The Wall Street Journal, the flagship publication of Dow Jones & Company (NYSE: DJ; www.dowjones.com), is the world's leading business publication. Founded in 1889, The Wall Street Journal has a print and online circulation of 2.1 million, reaching the nation's top business and political leaders, as well as investors across the country. Holding 29 Pulitzer Prizes for outstanding journalism, the Journal seeks to help its readers succeed by providing essential and relevant information, presented fairly and accurately, from a dependable and trusted source. The Wall Street Journal print franchise has more than 700 journalists world-wide, part of the Dow Jones network of nearly 1,800 business and financial news staff. Other publications that are part of The Wall Street Journal franchise, with total circulation of more than 2.6 million, include The Asian Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Journal Europe and The Wall Street Journal Online at WSJ.com, the largest paid subscription news site on the Web. In 2004, the Journal was ranked No. 1 in BtoB's Media Power 50 for the fifth consecutive year. |
| About Harris Interactive | Harris Interactive (www.harrisinteractive.com) is a global research firm that blends premier strategic consulting with innovative and efficient methods of investigation, analysis and application. Well known for The Harris Poll® and for pioneering Internet-based research methods, Rochester, New York-based Harris Interactive conducts proprietary and public research to help its clients around the world achieve clear, material and enduring results. Harris Interactive combines its intellectual capital, databases and technology to advance market leadership through its U.S. offices and wholly owned subsidiaries: London-based HI Europe (www.hieurope.com), Paris-based Novatris (www.novatris.com), Tokyo-based Harris Interactive Japan, recently acquired U.S.-based WirthlinWorldwide (www.wirthlinworldwide.com) and through a global network of affiliate firms. |
| About IMD | IMD is a leading global business school based in Lausanne, Switzerland. For over 60 years, IMD has worked with leading global companies to develop and retain management talent. IMD is the “global meeting place”: the most international of business schools worldwide. It offers learning based on innovative and highly relevant research that can be applied to business challenges immediately. This is IMD's "Real World. Real Learning" approach (www.imd.org). IMD is ranked number one worldwide in executive education (Financial Times, 2008). IMD’s MBA is ranked first worldwide (Economist, 2008). |
| Contact | Alessandro Sofia |
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