For the second year in a row, the School of Management ranked 12th in the world and 10th in the United States in a London Financial Times survey of the top 100 full time international MBA programs. The results are an improvement over two years ago, when the SOM was ranked 20th internationally.

The results, which were released last month, are based on several factors including salaries of graduates, job placement, international mobility and alumni recommendations. This year’s results were based partially on surveys from 1999 graduates. In addition to the ranking in the Financial Times, the SOM has also been ranked highly in reports by The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Forbes and Business Week this past year.

In the Financial Times rankings, the SOM scored among the top 10 programs in finance and economics and, based on alumni salary, the top 10 programs in finance and banking, consulting and North American salary percentage increase.

SOM Deputy Dean Stanley Garstka said in an e-mail that he was pleased by the ranking.

“This ranking is particularly gratifying because it validates recent efforts to build strengths in the School,” Garstka wrote. “The graduates surveyed are three years out; their positive reactions to their experience at the School shows that the education we impart has enduring value to students. Ultimately the ranking reflects the quality of both the faculty and students which we always knew to be quite high relative to the competition.”

Curtis Robinhold SOM ’03 agreed with Garstka about the ranking.

“My impression is that the Financial Times has recognized Yale SOM as one of the top programs in the world for a number of reasons: high quality faculty and students, successful job placement, and top-notch programs like the Center for International Finance and the focus on non-profit and environmental management,” Robinhold said.

But Brian McNulty SOM ’03 said in an e-mail that the rankings, while exciting, are as a moot point because the SOM is already highly regarded.

“It is nice to see Yale SOM held in such high regard by the world’s financial press,” McNulty said. “Hopefully the acclaim will attract increasingly talented students and faculty to our program. But the majority of the business community couldn’t care less about rankings. They already associate the Yale name with high quality education and people. No rankings are going change that.”

Robinhold acknowledged that the numbers are not always a perfect indicator of the quality of education students at the SOM receive.

“While it is comforting to know that we are one of the best business programs in the world, rankings are somewhat arbitrary,” Robinhold said. “More important to the students is what happens in the classroom and how much the Yale SOM education helps us when we move into the next stage of our lives.”