A Fortune.com feature ranking top business schools skunked UNC-Chapel Hill because the researchers may have confused data from Carolina's business school with N.C. State University's business school.

The list was posted Wednesday on Fortune.com under the headline, "50 Best Business Schools for Getting Hired." The Internet story was the first time that UNC-CH officials had even heard that the list was in the works, they said.

The Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC-CH consistently finishes in the top 20 in similar lists, and school officials smelled a mistake. School administrators questioned the consulting company that Fortune.com hired to compile the rankings. On Friday, the feature had a footnote explaining that UNC-CH was mistakenly left out and would be included in next year's survey. By Monday afternoon, the Internet feature had been temporarily removed from its site, a Fortune.com spokesman said.

But UNC-CH officials fear the damage has been done. Fifty business schools can claim to be ranked among the nation's best for getting their graduates hired. Kenan-Flagler is not one of them.

"Saying we're a footnote in the rankings is not the same as saying we're in the top 20," said Valarie Zeithaml, associate dean of the MBA program. "That's where students who want to go to business school get their information. Whatever someone thinks about rankings, they are the critical information sources for students."

A spokesman for Fortune.com said QS, a business-school research firm, compiled the research.

"We pride ourselves on our content and are looking into possible inaccuracies that have recently been brought to our attention," said Carmine Tiso, the spokesman.

This is the first year that Fortune.com has complied the list, Tiso said. He declined to specify how much Fortune.com paid QS for the research.

The list ranks The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania as No. 1. Harvard Business School is second. The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University is eighth, the College of Management at NCSU tied for 25th, and the Babcock Graduate School of Management at Wake Forest University tied for 49th.

Fortune.com and QS analyzed data from a database QS maintains of 111 business schools. The rankings were based on schools' reputation with recruiters, and factors such as base salaries for graduates and percentage of students with jobs after graduation.

Business schools count on the rankings to attract new students and to place graduating ones, said Zeithaml, a marketing professor.

As Zeithaml and others at UNC-CH worked through the weekend to have the rankings removed, the days ticked by, and the list, without Kenan-Flagler, remained available to business school candidates and companies.

Brian Stempeck, 27, a first-year master's student at Kenan-Flagler, said that while students pick schools based on a lot of factors, high rankings help a lot.

"All of us are very proud of UNC," Stempeck said. "It's just kind of a slap in the face that we weren't even included."

Stempeck worried that he might someday soon have to defend his school's reputation.

"It's the kind of thing where if I'm in a summer internship or a job a few years from now ... and somebody says to me, 'How come UNC wasn't in the top 50?' " he said. "That shouldn't be on me."

In its footnote to the rankings, Fortune.com explained that UNC-CH's business school was excluded because it was incorrectly listed in the survey. UNC-CH posted an e-mail exchange on its Web site between school officials and Nunzio Quacquarelli, managing director of QS. Quacquarelli, whose office is in London, did not return an e-mail message Monday afternoon.

In his e-mail message to UNC-CH, he explained that the mistake happened because, in analyzing data, the company may have intermingled statistics for Kenan-Flagler and NCSU's business school. The company will provide a written apology, Quacquarelli wrote.

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