BusinessWeek The Best B-Schools In 2014

BusinessWeek: The Best B-Schools In 2014 by: John A. Byrne on June 25, 2014 | 1 Comment Comments 8,296 Views June 25, 2014The University of Notre DameFor the fifth straight year, the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business won the top spot on  Bloomberg   Businessweek’s ninth annual ranking of the best U.S. undergraduate business schools.The University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce ranked second, also for the fifth consecutive year, and Cornell University’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management ranked third, for the third year running. Boston College’s Carroll School of Management and Olin Business School at Washington University, St. Louis rounded out the top five.The bigger news, perhaps, was that Indiana Universitys Kelley School broke into the top ten this year,  climbing to No.   8 from 13th. Kelleys move was fueled by scoring a first place ranking on the magazines employer survey.  A total o f 132 U.S. undergraduate business programs are included in the 2014  Businessweek  ranking which was released today (April 4) on Businessweek.com at  businessweek.com/2014undergradrankings.WHERES HARVARD AND STANFORD?Undergraduate rankings of business programs differ substantially from those of full-time MBA offerings largely because some of the the biggest players, such as Harvard Business School and Stanford Graduate School of Business, do not offer undergraduates a business major. That said, the biggest perennial surprise in the BW ranking is Whartons showing which this year slid to seventh place from fifth, although Wharton is often considered as having the best undergraduate business program in the world. In fact, U.S. News World Report, which ranks undergraduate business schools based on a survey of  deans and senior faculty at each undergraduate business program, puts Wharton first, followed by MIT, UC-Berkeley and Michigan, all tied for second place. New York Univer sity is in fifth place.  Yet, none of those schools even make the Top 5 on the BusinessWeek list.In many cases, there is a wide divergence in the two rankings, which can largely be attributed to the differing methodologies used to compile the lists. In contrast to U.S. News survey of deans and faculty, BusinessWeeks  ranking is based on five components:  student assessment (30%), academic quality metrics (30%), employer opinion (20%), median starting salary (10%), and a feeder school score (10%), which reflects how many students undergrad programs send to top MBA programs. The academic quality metrics include average SAT score, average class size, student/faculty ratio, percentage of students with business-related internships, and average number of hours students spend on coursework per week.Those metrics understandably result in often dramatic differences between the two rankings. BusinessWeeks No. 4 school, Boston College, is ranked 22nd by U.S. News. The University of Richm onds business school, which finished 17th on the BW list, is in 58th on the U.S. News ranking. And though Wake Forest Universitys undergraduate business program comes in 11th, according to BW, its 34th when U.S. News assigns its numbers (see our table on the following page). Page 1 of 212 »