The most recent round in the struggle for supremacy between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University has gone to the boys in baby blue, as UNC's business school outranks Duke's in the most recent Wall Street Journal ranking of MBA programs.

It's not often that Carolina tops Duke in academic rankings. But the WSJ's poll, based on the thoughts of business recruiters, puts UNC's Kenan-Flagler School No. 6 among 19 ranked "national" MBA programs. The Fuqua School at Duke, meanwhile, came in at No. 13.

Kenan-Flagler and Fuqua were No. 8 and No. 12, respectively, last year.

The WSJ's poll has traditionally been harsh on programs with a national reputation for academic excellence, the paper says, largely because recruiters see graduates of those programs as having "inflated egos and excessive expectations."

To wit, Harvard University's MBA program came in at No. 14, while the MBA program at Stanford University was dead last at No. 19 and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania was No. 11. Those three schools finished 1-2-3, respectively, in U.S. News & World Report's most recent list of the top MBA programs.

Fuqua is tied for No. 12 on that list, while Kenan-Flagler is tied at No. 18.

The top-ranked institution out of the 19 ranked "national" schools in the WSJ poll was Dartmouth College. The University of California at Berkeley came in at No. 2, while Columbia University rounded out the top three.