Fuqua Expels Students Over Copied Tests

Over 30 first-year MBA students at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke Unviersity are now facing severe penalties for having collaborated on the written answers for a take-home test and other class assignments.

The punishments meted out by the School's Judicial Board include expulsions for 9 students and one-year suspensions for 15 others. 9 other students will receive a failing grade for the course the work was for, and 1 will receive a failing grade on the exam in question.

The students have until mid-May to appeal the Judicial Board rulings.

The students got into trouble when one of their professors noticed that the wording of the answers on a number of the take-home tests were almost identical. That discovery prompted a wider review of other class assignments, some of which were also so similar that they suggested students had collaborated on what were supposed to be individual assignments.

Source: "Cheating Incident Involving 34 Students at Duke Is Business School's Biggest Ever," the Chronicle of Higher Education, April 30, 2007

Study Names Wharton Top B-School in Research Productivity

Wharton is the top business school in the country in terms of research productivity, according to an annual survey by the School of Management at the University of Texas in Dallas.

This is the third year in a row that Wharton has topped UT Dallas' b-school productivity rankings.

This year's top five schools are:

The University of Pennsylvania - Wharton
New York University - Stern
Harvard Business School
The University of Chicago GSB
Duke University - Fuqua

UT Dallas itself ranked 32nd in the overall rankings, which consider research productivity in all areas of business. It ranked 5th in research on Information Systems and 7th in research on Operations Management.

Source: "Business School Research Productivity Rankings Put Wharton on Top." Press Release, School of Business, the University of Texas at Dallas (Richardson, Texas), March 27, 2007.

Ross Application Numbers Rise By a Third

The University of Michigan's Ross School of Business received almost one-third more MBA applications this year than it did in 2005-2006, according to an article in the School's newspaper.

This year's application volume was 31 per cent higher than last year's. The quality of applications increased as well, with the average GMAT score for all applicants and for accepted applicants rising by several points.

Employment Stats for Stanford GSB Class of 2006

97 per cent of MBA students who graduated from the Stanford GSB in 2006 had received full-time job offers within 3 months of graduation.

The median base salary for the 87 per cent of Class members who provided that data was $110,000.

60 per cent of Class members reported receiving a signing bonus, worth an average of $20,000.

Source: "Employment Report - Class of 2006," the Stanford Graduate School of Business

Financial Times Rankings for 2007

The Financial Times has released its 2007 rankings of the world's top MBA programs.

According to the FT, the 10 best MBA programs in the world are:

1. The Wharton School
2. Columbia Business School
3. Harvard Business School
4. Stanford GSB
5. London Business School
6. The University of Chicago GSB
7. INSEAD
8. NYU – Stern
9. Dartmouth – Tuck School of Business
10. Yale SOM

Kelley Named Best MBA for Entrepreneurs

Indiana University's Kelley School of Business has won the 2007 National Model MBA in Entrepreneurship award. The U.S. Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship gives the award each year to the business school that offers aspiring entrepreneurs the best preparation for the unique challenges they will face. Kelley's program won high marks for its educational quality, comprehensiveness, innovation, and its impact on the national and global level.

Source: "Kelley School of Business' MBA Entrepreneurship Program, Director Earn Top National Honors," press release, Kelley School of Business (Bloomington, IN), January 18, 2007

Sloan Students Win Yahoo! Case Competition

A team of MBA students from MIT's Sloan School of Management will take home $5000 from California, have won first place in a business case competition sponsored by Yahoo! and held at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

A team of 4 second-year MBA students from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business took second place. Students from UCLA's Anderson School of Management won third prize.

Competitors were asked to devise a business plan for a Yahoo! television channel that would make Yahoo! as strong a brand in broadcasting as it is on the Internet.

Student teams from nine schools took part in the competition. In addition to Sloan, Ross, Anderson, and Haas, the schools represented were: Cornell University's Johnson School; the Columbia Business School; the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School; and Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

Source: "Ross Students Win Second Place in Yahoo! Case Competition," press release, Ross School of Business, the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI), January 3, 2007