PROVO — Brigham Young University is back at No. 1 in the polls — this time as a business school.

Ratings from nearly 4,500 corporate job recruiters pushed BYU's Master of Business Administration (MBA) program into first place among 51 regional schools ranked in the annual Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive survey, up from third place last year and sixth place in 2005.

BYU's Marriott School of Management finished just ahead of Wake Forest University and Ohio State University. The University of Utah's Eccles School of Business slid from 32nd to 40th in the regional rankings.

The national rankings included only 19 schools, led by Dartmouth College. The newspaper also ranked 25 schools as international programs. The three categories are based on whether most graduates are hired by international, national or regional companies.

"The first-place crown for Brigham Young, in Provo, Utah, comes as no surprise, given its consistently strong performance in previous Journal rankings," a Journal reporter wrote in Monday's edition of the newspaper. "Year in and year out, recruiters rave about graduates' maturity, competitive drive, integrity and international experience, especially from their missionary work for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."

The managing director of Banc of America Securities in New York told the Journal that BYU is increasing its emphasis on preparing students for investment banking and providing instruction that is more practical than theoretical.

"BYU students are hungry and aggressive but easy to work with," Steven Potter said. "They seem to have a greater desire to prove themselves and their school."

BYU finished second in ethics among all 86 schools in the three categories. The Journal asked recruiters which schools' graduates demonstrate strong ethical standards. Dartmouth got 180 nominations to 167 for BYU, which has about 100 fewer students. Yale University and the University of Notre Dame finished third and fourth.

BYU also made two other specialty lists. It ranked fourth in accounting, behind the University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania and University of Texas. And BYU finished ninth in the number of nominations for corporate social responsibility, behind Yale, Cal-Berkeley and Dartmouth.

"This is a tremendous honor to be at the top of such a distinguished list of schools," BYU dean Ned Hill said in a press release. "We are grateful to the companies that return again and again to recruit our students. We're very proud of our graduates and the high professional and ethical standards they have become known for throughout the world."