UVa retains No. 2 Spot among Nation’s Top Business Programs

University of Virginia

For the eighth consecutive year, UVa’s McIntire School of Commerce earned one of two top positions in Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s annual rankings of undergraduate business programs. Overall, UVa came in second after Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business and was followed by Cornell’s Dyson School of Applied Economics & Management at number three. 

“Over the past eight years, the school’s consistent top-tier ranking in a highly competitive environment is a tribute to the entire McIntire community,” McIntire Dean Carl P. Zeithaml said. “Our success is a direct result of our terrific students, faculty and staff, as well as the extraordinary support provided by our alumni, parents and corporate sponsors.”

To rank programs, BusinessWeek used nine measures, including surveys of senior business majors and corporate recruiters, median starting salaries, and the number of graduates each program sends to top MBA programs. Academic quality was rated by combining average SAT scores, student-faculty ratios, class size, the percent of students with internships, and student reports on hours devoted to class work.

This year, 145 undergraduate business programs participated in the ranking—three more than last year. Twenty-one were eliminated because of insufficient response rates in the student survey, employer survey, or both. 

Although the ranking at the top has remained entirely consistent for the past four years, the 2013 surveys resulted in a good deal of reshuffling in the ranks just below.



The University of Texas, Austin’s McCombs School of Business ranked higher than No. 10 for the first time since 2006, thanks to a strong showing in employer satisfaction.  Washington University’s Olin Business School jumped four spots to fourth overall because of high student satisfaction.  Olin also boasts the highest average SAT scores of any school in the ranking (1492) and received top reviews from students in both teaching and academic services.

And both Georgetown (16) and the University of Richmond (17) retained spots among Bloomberg’s top 20 undergraduate business schools.   Among specific measures, the Robins School ranked No. 2 for academic quality, No. 4 for student satisfaction, and received an A+ in Teaching Quality & Facilities/Services and an A for Job Placement.

Other highly ranked local schools included the College of William and Mary (27), James Madison University (29), Virginia Tech (52), Loyola Maryland University (53), American University (56), and George Washington University (71).   The University of Maryland was unranked because of data submission issues.

For the record, Bloomberg’s 2013 top 20 undergraduate business schools are:

1. Notre Dame (Mendoza)
2. University of Virginia (McIntire)
3. Cornell (Dyson)
4. Washington University—St. Louis (Olin)
5. University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
6. Boston College (Carroll)
7. Emory (Goizueta)
8. Michigan—Ann Arbor (Ross)
9. Texas—Austin (McCombs)
10. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (Kenan Flagler)
11. UC Berkeley (Haas)
12. Brigham Young (Marriott)
13. Indiana (Kelley)
14. NYU (Stern)
15. Villanova
16. Georgetown (McDonough)
17. Richmond (Robins)
18. Wake Forest
19. MIT (Sloan)
20. Bentley

Keep in mind that like any other "ranking," this list represents one organization's opinions and should represent little more than “food for thought” or a starting place for a more thorough investigation of undergraduate business programs.