TANAKA BUSINESS SCHOOL JUMPS 22 PLACES IN WORLD FULL TIME MBA RANKINGS

Tanaka Business School at Imperial College London has taken a dramatic leap up the Financial Times’ MBA rankings published today.

Tanaka jumped from 75 in 2004 to 53 in the rankings for full time MBAs, based on research into 127 international business schools and information taken from over 7,900 MBA graduates from the class of 2001.

Twenty criteria are used to determine the final MBA rankings. These criteria evaluate the career progress of graduates, the diversity of the MBA experience and the schools which are generating new ideas through academic and business research.

Tanaka's move up the rankings came from improvements in a number of different rankings criteria, including coming 4th in Europe for its research excellence; 5th in the world for entrepreneurship; and 6th in Europe for salaries, giving Tanaka 14th place in Europe overall.

Tanaka Principal, Professor David Begg, said the School was delighted with the results:

"The Imperial MBA graduates of 2001 were close witnesses to the planned improvements in our academic products and the construction of the new Tanaka Business School. Our ranking improvement overwhelmingly demonstrates our graduates' endorsement of the metamorphosis of the School into a world class business education facility.

"The name change signalled a massive step change in the MBA market, but we have kept all of the strengths of the Imperial brand. Imperial is a world recognised university, with an outstanding reputation in medicine, science and engineering, and it made sense for us to focus on offering management training to highly educated technologists.

Professor Stefan Szymanski, Director of Tanaka's full time MBA programme, said: "Tanaka's insistence on teaching excellence means that the academic names that attract students to Tanaka are also the ones doing the teaching - and give students access to their invaluable networks.

"Increasingly what people want is an MBA that focuses on innovation and technology and Tanaka is better placed to deliver than almost any business school in the world," he said.

Professor Begg said that salaries didn't tell prospective students everything about the quality of their MBA:
"At Tanaka we educate many highly paid bankers and investment analysts - but we also exploit the environment provided by a world class science campus renown for its entrepreneurship and research programmes - and offer the opportunity for careers that offer real satisfaction as well as financial reward.

Notes to editors:

Tanaka offers -

• Full time, executive and residential executive MBAs, MSc Finance, MSc Health and a doctoral programme
• Our Executive MBA is ranked 10th in the world, 3rd in Europe and 2nd in the UK 
• Our EMBA student, Kevin Baughan, won the Association of MBAs Student of the Year 2004 Award
• Our MBA programmes now offer students the Technology Venture Project, a unique opportunity to carry out a commercial feasibility study on a live technology being spun out by Imperial College London

Susie Haywood
Press and PR Manager
Tanaka Business School
Imperial College London
South Kensington campus
London SW7 2AZ
s.haywood@imperial.ac.uk
Tel:+44 (0)20 7594 9154
Mob:+44 (0)7739 851 881
www.imperial.ac.uk/tanaka