MBA school ranked with world’s best
By Natalie Bonomo
Old Gold and Black reporter

The university’s MBA program has been placed among the top in the nation and in the world by Forbes Magazine, Business Week, and the Financial Times of London by recent rankings.

Charles Moyer, the dean of the Babcock School of Management, thinks the rankings accurately reflect the MBA program.

“The Babcock School has emerged as one of the top graduate schools in the country and the world,” Moyer said.

In its Oct. 15 issue, Forbes magazine ranked the school third among MBA programs with net costs of less than $95,000. The program was ranked by how promptly MBA students can anticipate earning back the investment put into their degree, taking an average 3.2 years to break even.

“To be ranked third in the world is very impressive,” Moyer said.

Salary gains of MBA graduates over the past five years and the costs of earning the degree were also taken into account. Forbes indicated Babcock graduates received $73,000 in salary gains over a five-year time period, ranking it 18th in the nation and 23 in the world among every school surveyed.

Business Week ranked the school 22th nationwide and 26th in the world for executive MBA programs. This is the first time since 1991 that the magazine has performed in these particular rankings. The magazine ranked a total of 35 worldwide programs and contains information on 161 schools.

The Financial Times of London conducted a survey using alumni from the class of 1998, measures of the graduates’ success, faculty research and the diversity and international knowledge of students and faculty.

The survey also included information on the Winston-Salem executive MBA program and the Charlotte evening MBA programs. By these standards, the Babcock School was ranked 25th in the United States and 39th in the world.

Babcock is one of just 33 graduate business schools worldwide to be ranked by Business Week, the Financial Times of London, Forbes Magazine, US News & World Report and the Wall Street Journal.

“Every ranking looks at schools differently,” Moyer said, “but every way rankings look at us, we end up in the elite group.”

Michelle Horton, a second -year graduate student in the MBA program found out about the university’s MBA program through her husband, who was a second year student at Babcock at the time.

“The experience I got from spending time at this school was a real eye opener,” she said. “Babcock has a very unique culture. People care about you; that’s not a quality you’ll find at a lot of schools. They took a vested interest to know who I was. ”
Moyer believes the rankings validate the distinguished quality of the programs at the university and the Babcock school.

“They (the rankings) reflect the hard work of our faculty, staff, students and friends who have made these results possible,” he said.

David Henao, a first-year MBA student, says he chose the university not only because of its high rankings, but because the staff was courteous and helpful from the start.
“When I started sending e-mails looking for information, they always wrote back,” Henao said.

The rankings have improved since past years. “We are most gratified by the increased national prominence these rankings bring both Wake Forest University and the Babcock School,” Moyer said.

Babcock’s executive MBA program was launched in 1969 when the school was founded and remains the oldest of its kind in the Southeast.