Each of Northwestern’s five graduate programs fell in the 2001 U.S. News & World Report rankings, but administrators said the drops do not reflect a loss of quality.
In rankings released Friday, the Kellogg Graduate School of Management dropped from two to five. The four other programs ranked annually by the magazine also placed lower than last year. Engineering moved to 19 from 15, the School of Education to 20 from 18, the Medical School to 22 from 21 and the Law School to 12 from 11.
Administrators said they were largely unconcerned with the lower rankings.
“I don’t worry about the fact that we dropped in the rankings,” said Kellogg Dean Donald P. Jacobs. Jacobs pointed out that Kellogg trailed the top-ranked universities by only three points. Kellogg had an overall score of 97, while Harvard and Stanford universities tied for first place with 100.
Jacobs attributed the slide in part to the rankings’ emphasis on GMAT scores.
“Kellogg is at a disadvantage because we interview people and don’t pay as much attention to GMAT scores,” he said.
Stanford led all graduate business schools with an average GMAT score of 725, while Kellogg is in a three-way tie for fifth with 690. But Jacobs said that in the last admissions cycle, Kellogg rejected 2,000 applicants with GMAT scores over 700.
Jacobs said he was pleased with the separate departmental rankings, in which Kellogg’s executive MBA program ranked first for the third consecutive year. Kellogg has never placed lower than first in the category. The part-time MBA program ranked third, the same as last year.
“That doesn’t mean we can’t do better and it doesn’t mean that we’re not all working to do better,” Jacobs said. “It wasn’t a catastrophe.”
University President Henry Bienen said Kellogg’s slip was insignificant but that he was more worried about the McCormick graduate program.
Bienen said the university has put a lot of money into the school, but McCormick’s ranking has dropped for two consecutive years. The program has fallen six spots from its best-ever rank of 13 in the 1999 U.S. News rankings.
“The one I’m concerned about is engineering,” he said. “It could be there’s a problem there.”
But McCormick Dean John Birge said he questioned the rankings’ credibility.
“One of the problems with these rankings is they make up these weights, and the weights they changed two years ago put more emphasis on being big,” he said.
U.S. News ranks engineering schools in part by the amount of research they do, but Birge said measuring research in dollars skews the rankings toward larger schools.
Birge also said other schools may manipulate their data to gain an advantage in the rankings.
“I question how some schools are reporting their data,” he said. “There are certain artificial things you can do.”
But Birge said there was a positive side to this year’s rankings.
“One good thing is that our ranking among our peers went up,” he said. “Our reputation among other deans seemed slightly better.”
Among the other ranked programs, Bienen said the Law School deserved to be ranked higher.
“I was disappointed with the Law School ranking because I think it has really gotten a lot stronger,” he said.
Law School Dean David Van Zandt was unavailable for comment Friday.
Bienen said the Medical School will likely show little improvement in the rankings until the $200 million Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Center is completed in 2003.
“I want it to be better, and I know it’s getting better,” Bienen said. “(But) it can’t really go up any more until we have the new facility.”
Administrators said rankings are important to foreign students, who generally have less access to information about United States graduate schools than American students.
“I think that’s the biggest problem,” Birge said. “Especially in a country where you’re limited in your (information) resources.”
