Poets&Quants’ Best Undergraduate Business Schools Of 2024-2025

P&Q’S 10 BEST UNDERGRADUATE BUSINESS SCHOOLS OF 2024

WHARTON’S RETURN TO THE TOP

Wharton’s No. 3 finish in our 2023 ranking followed a five-year streak at the very top. As previously mentioned, Wharton’s slip was due almost entirely to not meeting the minimum response threshold on its alumni survey. In 2023, Wharton scored higher than any other school in Admission Standards and third highest in Career Outcomes, but only 57th in Academic Experience (accounting for 33.3% of the overall ranking score) because of its alumni survey.

This year, Wharton met the response threshold and earned full credit. Averaged with its alumni results from 2022 and 2021, it ranked 30th overall in Academic Experience. It also topped both the Career Outcomes and Admission Standards categories in 2024, which together account for 66.7% of the total score.

Following Wharton, USC’s Marshall School of Business came in second in Admission Standards (compared to first in 2023), seventh in Career Outcomes (ninth in 2023), and sixth in Academic Experience (ninth in 2023).

See how each of the Top 10 schools fared in the three categories below. Then click through pages 3-5 for more detailed results for each category.

HOW THE TOP 10 B-SCHOOLS COMPARE BY CATEGORY

AN UPDATED METHODOLOGY FOR 2024

Ninety-one schools participated in 2024’s ranking, including two schools that have not been previously ranked: Loyola Marymount University which debuted at No. 39 and Roger Williams University’s Mario J. Gabelli School of Business which debuted at No. 79.

P&Q’s undergraduate business school ranking is based on three categories we believe best measure the undergrad B-school experience: the quality and diversity of students enrolling in a program (Admissions Standards); the ability of a B-school to nurture, challenge, and grow those young minds (Academic Experience); and how the market and world’s top employers respond to those graduates when leaving the school (Career Outcomes). Each category is given an equal weight in the final score of 33.3%.

Within each of those categories, we look at a number of metrics with varying weights of importance. Through the years, we’ve adjusted metrics and weights based on school feedback and changes in admission practices, but we made no major changes this year. The only difference in methodology from 2023’s ranking is we considered three years of alumni data instead of two.

Admissions and career data is mostly gathered through our institutional survey that each school completed between July and December of 2023. However, two admission metrics are collected through our alumni survey because fewer and fewer schools collect the data themselves: Percent of alumni who were National Merit Scholar finalists or semifinalists, and the percent of alumni who finished in the top 10% of their high school classes.

Like the previous two years, only 10% of weight within the admissions category was given to average SAT scores while acceptance rate was given a weight of 30%. Last year, we stopped using the average high school GPA of the latest enrolling class based on feedback from school administrators and deans and replaced it with diversity data from the entering class. We did the same this year, giving the diversity metric a weight of 15%.

Academic Experience data comes entirely from the alumni survey, also administered between June and December of 2023. This year we surveyed students from the Class of 2021, or those graduating between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021.

The main difference in this year’s methodology is we included three years’ worth of alumni data (this year and the previous two years). We included two years worth of alumni data in 2023, and the previous six years we only included one year’s worth. We found that alumni surveys can vary wildly year to year if a single class of graduates was happy or unhappy. While there are still swings from the alumni survey, averaging three years of alumni response data helps cut down on the most dramatic swings.

To get full credit for the data collected in the alumni survey, we require a 10% or higher response rate from the surveyed class. We award schools their alumni data based on a sliding scale reflecting their alumni response rates. For example, a 10% or higher response rate earns 100% of alumni data, a 9.43% response rate earns 94.3% of the total alumni data, and so on.

This year, seven schools did not meet the 10% minimum response threshold and so did not get full credit for their alumni scores. That compares to 13 schools who didn’t meet the response threshold in 2023. (See the full explanation of our 2024 ranking methodology here.)

ONE SCHOOL RISES 20 SPOTS OVER 2023

Several schools saw double-digit rises through our ranking in 2024, but none rose higher than William & Mary University’s Raymond A. Mason School of Business. Mason rose 20 spots to No. 48. That’s on top of the 17 spots it rose in 2023, climbing to No. 68 from No. 85.

In 2024, the Virginia-based business school scored its highest in Admission Standards, ranking 15th in the category, up seven spots in the category from last year’s ranking. That includes an admission rate of 24.7% (the 25th most selective school in the ranking), dropping 14 points from its 38.8% acceptance rate the school reported last year. Its Class of 2023 also posted a higher average SAT score of 1409 (compared to 1364 for the Class of 2022), and 74.2% of its Class of 2021 alumni reported in our alumni survey they finished in the top 10% of their high school graduating classes. 80.% reported being National Merit Scholarship finalists or semifinalists.

Two more schools rose 17 spots apiece: Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business (ranked No. 29 overall) and Michigan State University Eli Broad College of Business (ranked 55th overall).

Tepper’s two-digit jump is on top of the 37 spots it rose in the 2023 ranking. It finished No. 8 in our Admissions Standards category (compared to 10th last year), posting a 9.4% acceptance rate which was the 11th most selective in the 2024 ranking. Its average SAT score of entering class was an impressive 1516, one of the top five averages posted. Tepper also reported that 96% of its undergrads completed a business related internship and employment rate of 94.57%. Its 2023 graduates earned an average first-year salary of $94,341 (the third highest in the ranking), and 83% of its graduates earned a signing bonus of $11,434 on average. In fact, Tepper ranked fourth out of the 91 schools in Career Outcomes.

Michigan Broad, meanwhile, ranked 37th in Career Outcomes, up 10 spots from 47th in the category in last year’s ranking. Its employment rate for job-seeking graduates from the Class of 2023 was 96.81%, up 1.86% from the year before. Those graduates also reported first-year starting salaries of an average of $70,379, 7.65% higher than the previous class. Broad also ended up 51st in Admission Standards (compared to 57th a year ago), and 77th in Academic Experience (compared to 78th).

Overall, seven schools rose 10 spots or more in the 2024 ranking, while five schools dropped the same amount.

BIGGEST JUMPS AND DIVES OF 2024

5 BEST IN EACH CATEGORY

If you compare the top 10 schools in the overall ranking with the top five finishers in each of our three ranking categories, you’re going to see a lot of the same names. But there is some variation.

No. 14 ranked Indiana University Kelley School of Business came second in Academic Experience based on responses from its alumni survey. On 17 survey questions getting at the heart of the student experience at Kelley, alumni rated it an average 9.1 out of 10 possible points. Further, 95.57% of alumni said their first job after graduation was in their desired industry.

Carnegie Mellon Tepper, ranked 29th overall, was a top-four finisher in Career Outcomes, as previously mentioned.

The table below shows the top five finishers in our three ranking categories, each accounting for a third of the final score.

BEST IN SHOW BY CATEGORY

A TROVE OF DATA ONLY FOUND HERE

We at Poets&Quants have always considered this project more than just a ranking. With thousands of data points collected from schools and alumni, it’s essentially the largest data reporting project we undertake.

And this year, like all previous years, we gathered loads of interesting data reflecting the state of undergraduate business education in the U.S. For example, it’s still very difficult to get into a top business school. Eleven schools had an acceptance rate of 10% or lower for students entering in the Fall of 2023. Just nine schools did so in our previous ranking. University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) had the lowest rate at 4.50%.

Five schools admitted classes that had an average SAT score of at least 1500, with New York University’s Stern School of Business leading the way for the second straight year. Its average of 1545 was 3 points higher than the Class of 2022.

And, two schools reported 100% employment for 2023 job-seeking graduates within three months of graduation: University of Richmond Robins School of Business (No. 18 overall) and Florida Southern College (No. 42). Another 25 schools reported employment rates of 95%

All 91 undergraduate business programs ranked by Poets&Quants are at the leading edge of business education, delivering a learning experience that transforms students’ sense of who they are and what they can do in the world. In fact, the ranked schools in this report reflect the top 12% of the more than 840 business schools accredited by AACSB International, the main accrediting body for business education.

The full ranking is presented in the following pages, along with a more detailed look at how every school fared in our three ranking categories. As always, in the next several days, we will publish even closer looks at many more metrics to offer the most comprehensive guide possible to prospective business school students evaluating their preferred schools. Some of these metrics are used directly in our methodology, some are not. Stay tuned for in-depth stories on acceptance rates, total compensation for first-year graduates, cost of top-ranked B-schools and more.

Page 3: Admission Standards rank
Page 4: Career Outcomes rank
Page 5: Academic Experience rank
Page 6: Final P&Q ranking of 2024