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News Release

Last modified: Friday, November 12, 2010

MBA program in IU's Kelley School remains among the elite in 'Bloomberg Business Week' rankings

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Nov. 12, 2010

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- During a historically difficult economic recovery -- and while facing strong competition from private institutions -- Indiana University's Kelley School of Business remained among the elite in Bloomberg Business Week's 2010 list of best MBA programs.

Based on surveys of graduating students and corporate recruiters, the magazine ranked the school 19th, third in the Big Ten and sixth among all public institutions. Fourteen of the top 20 schools -- and eight of the top 10 -- were private institutions.

IU's Kelley School was the only business program from Indiana that was in the top 20. Its MBA program has been ranked consistently among Bloomberg Business Week's top 20 since the magazine (previously known as Business Week) first began ranking MBA programs in 1988.

"Kelley offers a unique blend of intense academic rigor with an intimate, team-focused environment," one student, who was not identified, told the magazine. "The coursework is demanding, and Kelley does an excellent job at preparing students for interviewing, networking and career guidance. Professors are widely accessible, from office hours to dinner parties to tailgating events.

"Although I was concerned that the Bloomington location would be a geographic limitation [for recruiting], my concerns were overdone," the student added. "Full-time [job] offers are national in scope; my colleagues have accepted offers in New York, Boston, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Chicago and Dallas."

Dan Smith, dean of the Kelley School, was pleased that the program remains among such select company. "There are more than 3,000 colleges and universities in the United States that offer business programs. To be ranked among the top 1 percent of them is outstanding," he said. "I am personally grateful for the hard work and dedication of our faculty, staff and alumni and the commitment of our students."

"While major media rankings cannot be ignored, we focus our attention and efforts on a network of internal metrics that is directly related to our core mission such as research impact, teaching effectiveness, program innovation, the quality of students we attract, degree of globalization and the range of career opportunities for our students, among others," said Smith, placing the rankings in context.

In addition to overall rankings, Bloomberg Business Week assigned letter grades for offerings in general management, analysis, teaching and careers. Recruiters gave Kelley a grade of "A plus" for general management and an "A" grade for analytical skills. Students also gave Kelley faculty a grade of "A" for teaching and a "B" for career services. Corporate recruiters who were surveyed for the overall poll ranked the school 18th, which was an improvement from 19th two years ago.

Phil Powell, chair of the MBA program, said the Bloomberg Business Week "A" ranking of general management skills is a reflection of the required first semester integrated core curriculum at the Kelley School.

"The "A" grade from recruiters speaks to our strong integrated curriculum in areas like corporate finance, financial accounting, operations strategy, strategic management, ethics and economics that gives our MBAs an outstanding foundation in business fundamentals," Powell said. "Our MBA integrated core faculty are among the best."

In the live chat, reporters Louis Lavelle and Geoff Gloeckler noted that "grads had good things to say about the culture and the strong engaged faculty."

The rankings first were reported in a live Web chat on Thursday (Nov. 11), and the magazine will be available on newsstands today (Nov. 12).

Every other year the magazine surveys graduates from 101 top business schools and recruiters from more than 500 companies. Bloomberg Business Week also looks at the number of articles published by each school's faculty in 20 top academic journals. The student surveys count for 45 percent of the ranking, as does the recruiter survey. The remaining 10 percent take journal publications into account.

Two other MBA programs based in Indiana were ranked. The University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business was ranked 24th, and Purdue University's Krannert School of Management was ranked 41st.

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