Georgetown’s MBA program improved by seven spots in the most recent U.S. News and World Report rankings of the nation’s top graduate schools. The McDonough School of Business officials said that the school’s recently revamped curriculum was the reason for the school changing in rank from 29 to 22 among national MBA programs.

Implementing the new curriculum has been a multi-year process, consisting of the work of diagnostic teams composed of students, faculty, admissions staff and alumni and culminating with the faculty commission who designed the new curriculum. Officials said the decision for the changes came in response to the “updating” of curricula that had been occurring in business schools nationwide.

The two main changes in the curriculum are its emphasis on frontloaded courses and integrative experience.

A frontloaded course schedule means that there is an emphasis on the first semester of study, which former Associate Dean of the Business School Lamar Reinsch said, “is very hard.” Starting with the first week, students are given a heavy course load of accounting, statistics and strategy.

Reinsch said these courses are necessary because between 70 to 75 percent of students enrolled in MSB were not business majors as undergraduates. Thus, a frontloaded course schedule quickly provides the necessary foundation for these students, he said.

Frontloading also means that the students will be better prepared to compete for internships during the summer between their first and second years of school, Reinsch said. According to Reinsch, internships are very important in establishing the student in the business world because a job well-done might guarantee an after-graduation offer.

The second part of the course overhaul, according to Reinsch, was the assimilation of “integrative experience.” Twice each year, MBA students will be presented with real world situations or “live cases.” A “live case” means that a business executive from a company will visit class and the students, in teams, will discuss the strategic issues of that company. This is a way to increase corporate contact, allowing recruiters to locate potential employees as well as giving students first hand experience in the business world, Reinsch said. The fourth and last integrative experience of a student consists of him or her going abroad for one week and working with a company.

Reinsch says that the integrative experience is a way for students “to see business problems as a whole,” meaning that problems are not necessarily isolated to one field but usually encompass several.

“We can be proud of our students and innovative curriculum, the vote of confidence employers give our students and the positive implications of our marketing initiatives,” Dean and Director of MBA Programs Lawrence Abeln said. Abeln, who came to Georgetown in 1999 after serving as the dean of the MBA program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for four years, thinks the course changes have brought more relevance and flexibility to the program.

According to Abeln, one of biggest draws to Georgetown’s SB aside from its prime location in Washington D.C., is that it is just one graduate school that makes up the “preeminent portfolio of graduate schools” that Georgetown has to offer. Abeln noted that many of the students who are now applying to MSB are older and like the flexibility of being able to take classes at any of the graduate schools at Georgetown.

Abeln said he is very pleased with the improvement in ranking by Georgetown, which this year places it among the top six percent of the 341 MBA programs surveyed, especially since, he said, the U.S. News and World survey is “very well respected.”

The survey takes into account many factors such as academic reputation, determined by votes of the dean and assistant dean at each school, as well as objective admissions data including, test scores and G.P.A. and corporate reputation comprising job placement and starting salary.

Abeln said that although MSB does not “believe that we ought to build strategy based on rankings . we do rely on rankings.”

Georgetown’s Law program was ranked 14th for the second consecutive year, between Northwestern University and the University of Texas-Austin.

Georgetown’s Medical School moved up one spot in the rankings from last year to 43. The rankings were released this week.