Rivalry between N.C. State and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill may have surfaced again, but this time, not because of the upset at the basketball game March 11, but instead with each university’s business school ranking.

When Fortune magazine’s first ever list of Top 50 Business Schools for Getting Hired was released on CNNMoney.com Feb. 21, N.C. State’s College of Management officials said they were pleased at the sight of its name as No. 25 on the list.

However, with this excitement came confusion: UNC-Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, which has been highly ranked by major publications in the past, did not appear anywhere on the list.

“As soon as the rankings came out, we called those people because we were somewhat concerned that we were ranked and Carolina wasn’t,” Ira Weiss, dean of the College of Management, said. “That is not typical given that they are a much older and much more established school of business than we are. We are only 15 years old and they typically get a relatively high ranking.”

Weiss said Fortune officials gave him the assurance that there was no mistake with N.C. State’s ranking.

The rankings were based on four criteria: starting salaries of graduates, percentage of students who have job offers after graduation, number of job offers and recruiter surveys in which recruiters rated the MBA programs on a numeral scale.

However, following the initial release of the rankings, the methodology of the rankings by recruiters began to surface.

According to Weiss, in the survey, it was clear that UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School was listed on the survey, but it is unclear exactly how N.C. State COM was listed, whether it was listed as “N.C. State College of Management” or “North Carolina College of Management.” As a result, if the survey listed NCSU as North Carolina’s College of Management, recruiters could have mistakenly ranked NCSU as they would have UNC.

“Kenan-Flagler was very clearly listed on the survey, which everyone knows is the business school,” Weiss said. “You wouldn’t expect a school to be listed twice. Carolina questioned the validity of the survey, and I understand their questioning on it. There are obviously some other issues there because Boston University also articulated some great concerns.”

Fortune officials and Valerie Zeithaml, dean of Kenan-Flagler Business School, could not be reached for comment.

Weiss said the other three factors of the ranking were completely accurate.

“The starting salaries that students got from our MBA program, the number of job offers students got upon graduation from the program and all that information was not confusing at all,” Weiss said. “All of the aspects of the rankings, except [the recruiter surveys], were absolutely correct.”

Weiss said there was also a picture of the NCSU Bell Tower next to its name on the list and that it was clear which school Fortune was ranking, eliminating claims of a mix up between NCSU and UNC-Chapel Hill.

As a result of calls from Boston University, NCSU and UNC, Fortune officials found that there were errors in the data such that they could no longer publish or endorse the findings of the survey.

CNNMoney.com reported that the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC had been inadvertently excluded from the list, and the list has since been removed from the Web site.

Steven Allen, professor and associate dean for graduate programs and research in the College of Management, said he believes that NCSU’s ranking was still correct.

“There is no mistake [in NCSU’s ranking],” Allen said. “The claim is that there were methodological issues with the survey and the data for Kenan-Flagler were not complete.”

Chelsea Miles, a sophomore in business management agrees that the college has proved its No. 25 ranking.

“Our business school is growing and has a great facility and people who automatically think the ranking is a mistake are underestimating our credibility,” she said. “The College of Management is well established and is as deserving of a high ranking as Carolina.”

Weiss said he does think it is probably a mistake that Carolina was not listed on the rankings.

“Something happened there because Carolina is a school that typically does get ranked in the top 25 schools,” he said.

US News and World Report ranked N.C. State’s College of Management No. 59 among MBA programs in the country in 2006, and Weiss said he thinks it also deserved its No. 25 rank in Fortune.

“Our students are doing great in the marketplace, and we believe that the Fortune rankings were relatively accurate in depicting how well our students are doing in the marketplace,” he said.