UConn Advance - October 23, 2006 - UConn ranked among top MBA programs

The UConn School of Business is included in BusinessWeek's bi-annual rankings of the top MBA programs in the nation.

This is the third consecutive time UConn has appeared in these rankings, joining a group of the top business schools in the country.

It is the only public MBA program in New England that is ranked.

"We are delighted to share company with the most elite business schools in the country," says Mohamed Hussein, interim dean of the business school.

"It pleases us to have BusinessWeek validate what we, our students, and stakeholders already know - that an education from the UConn School of Business is exceptional."

Individual ratings were based on a combination of student and corporate recruiter surveys, with an intellectual capital rating based on recently published faculty articles.

BusinessWeek surveyed more than 10,000 business students, asking them to rank the quality of their teaching staff, career opportunities, recruiting efforts, and alumni network.

Corporate recruiters were asked how many MBAs they hired in the past two years, and at which institutions their companies actively recruited.

Businessweek ranked 68 schools, but assigned numerical rank only to the top 30.

The balance of schools were placed in the second and third tiers, with eight schools in the second tier. UConn was ranked in the third tier.

Of the 68 schools, 32 are public, and 36 are private. The only other school to be ranked in Connecticut, public or private, is Yale.

UConn's rating in BusinessWeek comes on the heels of praise from several other respected publications.

Within the past month, UConn has been acknowledged by both The Wall Street Journal and The Princeton Review in their rankings of the top business schools.

There are more than 1,400 business schools around the world.

The latest Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive Business School Survey placed UConn's School of Business in the top 4 percent of business schools worldwide.

The Wall Street Journal survey reflects the opinions of both recruiters and business students.

The Princeton Review's 2007 edition of the "Best 282 Business Schools" described UConn's School of Business as "an outstanding business school."

The publication's survey found that the school offers a challenging program that mirrors life in the corporate world.

"We're honored," says Suresh Nair, associate dean for graduate programs in the School of Business.

"While we don't obsess over rankings, this sort of public recognition reflects well on our students, our faculty, and what we're trying to accomplish here at the university."

The school has bucked the national trend of declining applications and enrollment in full-time MBA programs over the past few years: applications are up 50 percent and the first-year class is nearly double in size this year.

Nair says, "We like to cite two reasons for our success. First, we're pursuing better pools of talent and we're pursuing individual candidates more aggressively. Second, without diluting our academic focus, we unapologetically pay attention to recruitment and placement of our MBA graduates. This benefits everyone."

Since November 2000, the school and partner corporations have developed a series of experiential learning initiatives - known as "learning accelerator" programs - that take students out of the classroom and into the real world.

These include the semester-long MBA Integration Project (co-sponsored in past years by Aetna, The Hartford, Pitney Bowes, Pratt and Whitney, Xerox and GE); the Student Managed Investment Fund; GE edgelab - a cooperative venture with General Electric in Stamford; and, in Hartford, the SS&C Technologies Financial Accelerator.

The programs are now garnering national recognition.

The UConn School of Business has a total of 1,181 MBA students on four campuses: Storrs, Hartford, Stamford, and Waterbury.

Full-time students number 136, with 963 part-time students, and 82 in the Executive MBA program.