<p>Jazzymom: The difference between the #25 business school and #5 business school is FAR GREATER than the difference between the #3 med school and the #31 med school. Medicine is a different animal. Just getting into ANY top 50 med school is an acheivement. But in law/ business its not true at all. Often the best business firms don’t even recruit at schools ranked after #10, and similarly the top law firms stop recruiting around #20.</p>
<p>Also you have to take into account that places like Brown and Dartmouth are essentially super LACs with very few grad students (less than 50 at Dartmouth engineering). While WashhU is a super research university. So essentially Dartmouth’s undergrad engineering school is ranked based on mostly undergrad students and it still manages to hold its own against a more research and graduate driven WashU engineering school. </p>
<p>Also WashU might have very talented students but why does it place so poorly at Harvard Law, Yale Law, Wharton, Northwestern Law, Columbia Business, etc? WashU is ranked #41 in terms of an arguably east coast biased graduate school survey, but its so far behind that the gap is way to big to explain. Also why does it not have elite recruiters on campus? Olin’s recruiting list looks a lot more like Penn State Shreyer’s list than it looks like Columbia, Harvard, or Dartmouth’s.</p>
<p>The truth is WashU is a great school on the up and up, but in certain areas it is overranked in my opinion.</p>