Poets&Quants’ Best Undergraduate Business Schools Of 2023 FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 5 YEARS, WHARTON DID NOT WIN BY NATHAN ALLEN
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here’s a first time for everything. And for the first time in seven years, the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business tops Poets&Quants’ Ranking of Best Undergraduate Business Schools. The Los Angeles-based school ends a five-year streak of wins by The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and becomes just the third school ever to top our undergraduate B-school ranking. The Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis won in 2016, the inaugural year of this ranking. At Poets&Quants, we believe three components best measure the undergraduate business school experience: the quality and diversity of students enrolling in a program; the ability of a B-school to nurture, challenge, and grow those young minds; and how the market and world’s top employers respond to those graduates when leaving the school. In other words, admissions standards, student experience, and career outcomes. In 2022, though USC Marshall did not outright win any of the three categories, it displayed a truly balanced approach, placing second in admissions standards and ninth in both academic experience and career outcomes, leading to its placement atop the overall ranking. WHARTON SLIPS TO THIRD BECAUSE OF THE ALUMNI SURVEY Following USC is Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, which placed second for the second year in a row. Georgetown finished fifth two years ago. The McDonough School topped our career outcomes category and placed third in academic experience and fourth in admissions. Wharton, which placed first in admissions and third in career outcomes, was sunk this year for not meeting the 10% minimum response rate in our alumni survey. But the fact that Wharton was able to finish third even with incomplete data only reinforces how great a school it is, and how dominant it continues to be in our data-based ranking. The University of Virginia’s McIntire School of
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Commerce placed fourth, up one spot from last year’s fifth-place finish. Besides Wharton, no other school has been more consistent in our top five than Virginia McIntire, which continues to be the top public university in our ranking. Once again, Virginia’s top-five placement was buoyed by stellar scores in the alumni survey, placing the school second in our academic experience category. It also placed seventh in both admissions standards and career outcomes. Rounding out the top five in 2023 is the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza School of Business. Mendoza climbed three spots from last year, thanks to stellar admissions standards, where it placed third. The South Bend, Indiana school also placed 10th in academic experience and 11th in career outcomes. CORNELL SURGES INTO THE TOP TEN Cornell University’s Dyson SC Johnson School catapulted 10 spots from last year into the top 10 of the 2023 ranking. The main reason? Cornell reported its standardized test scores this year when it hasn’t in previous years. That helped Cornell finish fifth in the academic standards category, which was its best placement across the three categories. It placed eighth in career outcomes and 12th in academic experience. New York University’s Stern School of Business remained in seventh place, where it finished last year. The University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business slipped a couple of spots from sixth last year to eighth this year. Washington University’s Olin Business School had the biggest tumble in the top ten, falling five spots into ninth. And the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School surged four spots to round out the top ten in t10th place. These ten undergraduate business programs lead an exceptional group of 93 schools ranked by Poets&Quants this year. All of them 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
