Since you already know this from the headline above, we won't drag it out any longer: The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, the world's first graduate school of business, ranks first with corporate recruiters in a new Wall Street Journal study of the top international business schools.

In a result that's sure to surprise many business schools and students alike, the century-old Tuck School received the highest rating of 50 business schools included in the Journal's first survey of M.B.A. recruiters, beating such elite institutions as Harvard University, Stanford University and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Recruiters who rated the schools in an online survey praised Dartmouth's small, collegial M.B.A. program for producing general managers who make loyal team players.

Close behind Dartmouth in second and third place were two other small M.B.A. programs with fewer than 500 full-time students -- Carnegie Mellon University's Graduate School of Industrial Administration and Yale University's School of Management. Both received high marks for their students' teamwork strengths and analytical and problem-solving skills.

Two larger schools rounded out the top five: fourth-place University of Michigan, which was cited for its "outstanding generalists" and impressive manufacturing program, and fifth-place Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management, described by one recruiter as "a combination of Midwest ethic and Ivy League academics."

The rankings are based on a survey conducted last fall by Harris Interactive Inc. in which 1,600 recruiters rated schools they knew from firsthand experience. The survey reached people in the field doing the actual recruiting -- the heads of business units, line managers and others -- not just the human-resources executives stationed at corporate headquarters. Each school was rated on 27 factors that influence a recruiter's decision to visit a particular campus and hire a particular graduate, such as the career-services office, the core curriculum and students' leadership potential and teamwork skills. In addition, a school's final ranking took into account its "mass appeal," based on the number of recruiters who rated it.

There's no question that all of the schools in the study offer quality M.B.A. programs. But The Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive study of M.B.A. programs is the only major survey that focuses exclusively on the opinions of recruiters -- the buyers of M.B.A. talent. Consider it a consumers' ranking of M.B.A. programs -- with results that differ considerably from those in other business-school guides.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the survey is the mixed reviews garnered by the big, prestigious business schools. Some of the titans, including Northwestern, the University of Chicago and Harvard, ranked in the top 10. But Wharton placed only 18th, and Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford finished much further down in the rankings. Recruiters complained that graduates of some of the most prominent schools expect too much too soon in terms of salary and position and are difficult to retain for very long.

A better value, many recruiters said, are public schools like Purdue University and the University of Texas. Ten public universities placed in the top 25 largely because recruiters believe they offer solid management talent at a manageable price. Dwight James, a financial analyst at Delphi Automotive Systems in Saginaw, Mich., has recruited at Northwestern, DePaul University and other private schools, but is especially fond of Michigan State University. "Michigan State students are highly motivated and strong on communications and analytical skills," he says. "I don't see a big difference between them and higher-priced graduates at other schools."

Regionally, it was an even split among the East, Midwest and South for the top 20 spots in the rankings. Not a single Western school, however, made the cut. The top-rated school in the West -- the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley -- placed 21st.

In fact, recruiters say they have stopped visiting some of the California schools, especially Stanford, because their graduates are simply unwilling to leave the sunshine and Silicon Valley behind. Business schools in California also lagged behind the other schools on students' leadership potential, their general management point of view and recruiter satisfaction with the career-services office.

Another surprise: M.B.A. programs outside the U.S. made a strong showing in the survey, representing nearly 20% of the ranked business schools. The M.B.A. degree, an American creation, is being offered by more universities abroad, and their graduates appeal to multinational companies seeking managers with a strong international perspective. Canada claims the highest-ranked foreign school -- the University of Western Ontario in 22nd place -- while six schools in Europe, one in Mexico and a second in Canada also placed in the top 50.

What set the top 10 schools apart from the rest? For one thing, they significantly outscored the others on five specific attributes: teaching analytical and problem-solving skills; recruiters' past success with the quality of graduates hired from that school; the school's preparation of students for the New Economy; graduates' strategic thinking; and "chemistry," or general good feelings about the school.

Many of the top-ranked schools also received high scores for their graduates' communication and interpersonal skills, which nine out of 10 recruiters said they consider very important. Jeff Puzas, a manager at the consulting firm PRTM in Washington, D.C., has recruited at both Harvard and Carnegie Mellon and believes Carnegie Mellon has the edge in analytical and technical skills while graduates of Harvard excel in interpersonal communication. "Interpersonal skills are like a sixth sense and have been highly underrated as a differentiating factor for students," says Mr. Puzas, a Carnegie Mellon graduate. "Most of what I do every day as a management consultant has to do with interpersonal skills, not my I.Q."

Being small clearly was a virtue for many of the business schools in the survey. Half of the top 10 schools and 14 of the top 25 report full-time M.B.A. enrollments of fewer than 500 students. In general, recruiters say, they find graduates of small M.B.A. programs more collaborative and personable than their counterparts at large schools.

Survey respondent Julie Hamrick, president of Ignite Sales, a four-year-old Internet marketing firm in Dallas, has visited business schools of all sizes. "But we find time and time again better-prepared students at the small schools; they're less theoretical, more hands-on," she says. "They also seem more team-oriented, and it's critically important that you can rely on every member of the team in a start-up like mine."

Ms. Hamrick scouts for M.B.A. talent at her alma mater, Southern Methodist University, which ranked ninth in the survey and has a full-time M.B.A. enrollment of 236. She also has recruited at Dartmouth, with 375 full-time students, and found that in many ways it epitomizes the small-school environment. The student-faculty ratio is 7 to 1, team projects figure heavily in the curriculum, and many students live in campus dorms and belong to school hockey teams and ski groups in remote, snowy Hanover, N.H. "You have to get along at a small business school like Tuck; there's no place to hide," says Bill Sones, a consultant for a software company in Boston, who received his M.B.A. degree from Yale in 1998. "The student and alumni networks are very close-knit at Dartmouth and Yale. Students aren't out for No. 1 as much; you don't have to watch your back."

The business-school survey included an academics section in which recruiters nominated schools they considered exceptional in certain fields of study. Three schools placed first in two different academic disciplines: Wharton for accounting and finance; Stanford for e-commerce and entrepreneurship; and Harvard for general management and strategy.

But academic reputation had surprisingly little bearing on recruiters' overall ratings of the schools. Faculty and curriculum were among the least-significant factors in the survey. That helps explain why someof the academic stars didn't dazzle recruiters and didn't necessarily receive a top ranking. "In the finer academic institutions, virtually 100% of the faculty are Ph.D.s," says Jack Bragin of the recruiting firm Michael Page International Inc. "But students can benefit from professors who are more streetwise and have more real-world business experience."

Many recruiters said they find it especially difficult to compete for graduates from some of the academic elite. That may change amid the economic slowdown as the job market eases. But at the time of the survey, respondents complained that they often came away from the elite schools empty-handed because of graduates' unrealistic salary and career expectations. They also criticized the graduates for having arrogant attitudes and said they find few team players at some of the prestigious schools.

Recruiters clearly are ambivalent about schools like Harvard, which theyoverwhelmingly named as the M.B.A. program with the most competitive environment. They see it as the gold standard of business schools, but the largest number think of "arrogance" when asked what first comes to mind when they hear the Harvard name. Even so, when recruiters were asked which school they would choose to get an M.B.A. degree, Harvard ranked third in number of mentions.

"Harvard graduates I have interviewed are discernibly different from other Ivy League graduates -- more well-rounded, entrepreneurial and worldly," says Mr. Bragin. "But you have to deal with their excessive expectations about what their M.B.A. degree will get them. Some seem to expect to be CEO within two years."

Kristin Gandy, associate recruiter for Enron Corp., was disappointed with her visit to M.I.T. last year. She recalls that about half the students on her interview schedule failed to show up and didn't bother to call or write a letter of apology.

"We didn't have a good fall season at M.I.T. and weren't at all pleased with the results," Ms. Gandy says. But, she adds, the school seems to be changing for the better this year under its new career-development director. Indeed, Jackie Wilbur, the new director, says M.I.T. students will now lose recruiting services if they miss interviews.

M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management ranked 38th in the survey and received its lowest scores for its career-services office, value for the money spent on the recruiting effort and companies' success in retaining its graduates. Richard Schmalensee, the Sloan School's dean, is sympathetic to recruiters' frustrations, but he doesn't apologize for his students' selectivity.

"You can make the argument that our students are expensive and hard to keep," Mr. Schmalensee says. "But if they weren't, I'd have a problem with that. People who like to take risks and are looking for challenging work are drawn to M.I.T."

Tim Butler, director of M.B.A. career-development programs at Harvard, believes recruiters too quickly blame the schools for their low recruiting yield or their inability to retain the graduates they do hire.

"The real issue often is the attractiveness of the company and its ability to develop their careers and keep them interested," he says. "Companies think only of pay as a way to keep employees. They need to think more creatively of how to excite these top performers."

The Rating Criteria

Recruiters rated business schools and their students on these 27 attributes.

School Attributes

• The career-services office at that school
• The past success recruiters have had in terms of the number of graduates they have hired from that school
• The past success they've had with the quality of graduates they have hired from that school
• The core curriculum
• A particular specialty that is offered at that school
• The faculty
• The students' average number of years of work experience
• The willingness of the school's students to relocate to the job location recruiters require
• The long-term success recruiters have had with students hired from the school
• The success they have had retaining students hired from the school
• The school's success in preparing students for the New Economy
• "Chemistry" -- that is, the general like or dislike recruiters have of the school overall

• Communication and interpersonal skills
• Original and visionary thinking
• Leadership potential
• Ability to work well within a team
• Analytical and problem-solving skills
• Strong international perspective
• Strategic thinking
• Ability to drive results
• Specific functional expertise
• Adaptability, including the ability to deal with ambiguity
• Fit with the corporate culture
• Entrepreneurial skills
• General management point of view

• Ability to meet overall recruiting needs in terms of the number and quality of students
• Overall value for the money invested in the recruiting effort