In a recent class exercise, students were asked to create a marketing slogan for the Olin School of Business. A classmate thought for several minutes and came up with “Fourteenth and Rising.” But another student quickly pointed out that while Washington University as a whole was ranked fourteenth in the nation, Olin’s undergraduate program was only sixteenth and the graduate program had tumbled to twenty-sixth. Indeed, I remember a Student Life article last year in which Olin administrators argued how the drop could not possibly be rationally substantiated.

The conversation in class got me thinking about how hard Olin tries to march up the annual list of top business schools. In my mind, administrators should spend less of their time taking actions aimed at boosting the school’s ranking and more time focusing on giving students the best education possible. If they were to do this, both students and employers would be better served.

What is truly important when it comes to a top undergraduate or graduate business program? To me, the reputation of the school involves two groups, the students who pay a hefty price to attend a top institution, and the employers who count on Olin to provide them with an immensely talented and capable core of college graduates. From the students’ end, we need to be prepared, educated, and confident in our abilities to succeed. Employers have many of the same goals; they are looking for the brightest of the nation’s business students, for they will make up a large portion of their employee base for decades to come.

Over my years, classmates of mine at WU have complained that many top-notch companies do not recruit at Olin. These students often suggest that companies believe St. Louis to be too far for them to travel, and that the Midwest is just a bad place to attend business school if you want to be noticed. Nonsense. Do we honestly think that the budgets of top Wall Street firms choose to interview at Ivy League schools rather than WU because those institutions are ranked higher?

I would argue that WU does not attract the attention of many top firms because, over the years, many companies have found that graduates of Ivy League schools, Stanford, and the like are most helpful to their organizations. In their eyes, why not keep handpicking talent from the trees that have provided the best fruit in the past?

If Olin wants to build a business program that truly rivals those ranked above us, they need simply to provide companies with the best students possible, the students with the skills and attitudes that will make their organization better. Maximize your effort in showing companies why your students are just as smart and valuable as those from other top schools, because we truly are.

If Olin takes the time to better educate its students, employers from all over the country will be more than happy to travel to St. Louis to find the very best talent. If Olin focuses not on rankings, but on the students and how to maximize what they have to offer to potential employers, I’d be willing to bet that the Olin School of Business just may find itself, dare I say, “Fourteenth and Rising.”

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2001 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Opinions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.