THE B-SCHOOL APPLICATIONS RACE: WE'RE NO. 1! NO, WE'RE NO. 1!

Edited by Douglas Harbrecht

Don't believe everything you hear. Or at least, not all of the admissions and placement figures reported by top U.S. business schools. The latest perceived inaccuracy comes from Harvard Business School. And it could raise anew the question of which is the hottest school in the eyes of applicants -- Harvard, or the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

The question at Harvard is: How many students really did apply for its 1997 admissions cycle. It seems that in a confidential benchmarking survey completed by several elite B-schools, Harvard said it received 7,447 applications for the class that entered it B-school last fall. That compares with the total of 7,469 it announced publicly.

It's a small discrepancy, but the question of which number is correct is at least symbolically important in the heated competition among B-schools. The latter number places Harvard ahead of Wharton's 7,461 applicants in 1997, making it the slight favorite in the eyes of prospective students. The lower figure makes Harvard No. 2 -- not shabby, but an also-ran nonetheless.

Harvard officials maintain that the two different numbers simply reflect a single instance of miscommunication. They add that on every other survey, both internal and public, they have used the higher number. Even so, the fact that students -- and the schools themselves -- care so much about such comparisons raises an issue with regard to the accuracy of the numbers schools provide. After all, the key statistics on each B-school are calculated and reported by the schools themselves. None of the data is independently audited.

Over the years, according to admissions officials at several schools, the lack audits has left open the door for a degree of creative accounting rivaling that used on corporate balance sheets. "I think we all are tempted to inflate numbers or make things better than they are for purposes of advertising," says Don Martin, director of admissions at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. "And when it becomes apparent that one's application count can affect a ranking, for example, then the temptation is tremendously great to try to make it look like you had higher numbers."

Perhaps the crux of the problem is the lack of a common standard for reporting data -- a situation exacerbated by the growing number of surveys school administrators are faced with each year. For example, Randee Sacks, public relations director for Columbia University's Graduate School of Business, says that her office receives more than 30 surveys annually -- each varying in length and specificity. With no standards to adhere to, "people count applications differently," adds Sally Jaeger, the director of admissions at Dartmouth's Tuck School. "There are many loopholes."

In an attempt to bring order to this chaos, several schools now participate in benchmarking studies that involve sharing recent admissions and placement data that conforms to agreed-on standards for how the numbers should be tabulated. Despite the competition among schools, "prospective students are always surprised by level of cooperation and friendliness that exists between directors of admissions," says Chicago's Martin.

Yet insiders say that even within this select fraternity, discrepancies turn up between the numbers that some schools report publicly, and those they report internally. So much for the honor system, says a concerned official at one school, who adds: "The problem won't go away until the process is audited." Says another admissions official: "If there's nothing to hide, there should be no problem" with having the numbers verified independently.

The difficulty with auditing, however, is persuading the major schools to turn over their numbers to an outside group. "An independent organization using Web-based technology could effectively achieve the audit function if -- and only if -- universities agree to allow their files to be retained and stored outside their walls," says David Wilson, president of the Graduate Management Admissions Council, the organization that owns and oversees the implementation of the GMAT, the standardized test every B-school applicant must take. One admissions official says that idea has been floated -- only to be rejected by many admissions directors.

So it seems that for at least the near future, the numbers business schools report will remain subject to interpretation. And Harvard? It's sticking with the figure that made it No. 1.

By Nadav Enbar in New York