Poets&Quants' Best Undergraduate Business Schools Of 2024

ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE

Data for our Academic Experience category is taken entirely from an alumni survey we send graduates from each school in our ranking. This year, we surveyed the Class of 2021.

To get full credit for the data collected in the alumni survey, we require a 10% or higher response rate from the graduating 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. They include Florida International University, Northern Illinois University, Oregon State University, San Diego State University, Texas Tech University (Rawls), University of Akron, and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Lubar). (Read more about how the alumni survey affects schools’ Academic Experience scores in our methodology explanation.)

We calculate this category based on three metrics: The average of 17 core experience questions that ask alumni to rate their satisfaction on a 10-point scale (accounting for 80% of the category score). Questions range from rating the quality of their professors to evaluating the effectiveness of their school’s career advising services.

We also consider the percentage of alumni who took part in a “significant experience” in their undergraduate business education (weighted 10%). That might include a major consulting project, thesis, or other program feature instrumental to their professional development, or a meaningful global immersion.

Finally, we measure the percentage of students whose first jobs after graduation were in their desired industries and companies (weighted 10%).

For 2024’s ranking, we averaged 2023’s survey results with results from 2022 and 2021. (For schools who have not been previously ranked, we used only the 2023 alumni data.)

Alumni at University of Virginia McIntire School of Commerce (ranked No. 4 overall) rated their experience higher than alumni at any other school. Indiana University Kelley School of Business (No. 14) alumni rated their experience the second highest with Georgetown McDonough (No. 3) coming in third. You can see how 2021 alumni rated their schools in each of the survey questions in our story, How Alumni Rate Their Undergraduate Business Degrees.

Experience Rank	School	Experience Score	2024 Overall Rank
1	University of Virginia (McIntire)	100.00	4
2	Indiana University (Kelley)	99.45	14
3	Georgetown University (McDonough)	97.75	3
4	University of Michigan (Ross)	97.64	5
5	Georgia Institute of Technology (Scheller)	97.16	10
6	University of Southern California (Marshall)	96.94	2
7	University of North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler)	96.93	8
8	Texas Christian University (Neeley)	96.55	25
9	University of Illinois (Gies)	96.24	15
10	University of Notre Dame (Mendoza)	95.82	7
11	Fordham University (Gabelli)	95.50	21
12	Cornell University (Dyson SC John)	95.40	6
13	Miami University (Farmer)	94.37	46
14	Washington University in St. Louis (Olin)	93.83	11
15	Villanova University	93.76	12
16	Southern Methodist University (Cox)	93.11	26
17	Elon University (Love)	93.10	40
18	New York University (Stern)	92.79	9
19	Bucknell University	92.39	20
20	Hult International Business School	92.37	38
21	Binghamton University	91.79	28
22	University of Richmond (Robins)	91.24	18
23	University of Pittsburgh	91.16	30
24	Christopher Newport University (Luter)	91.06	74
25	Emory University (Goizueta)	90.63	13
26	University of Tennessee (Haslam)	90.58	35
27	Boston University (Questrom)	89.75	17
28	Providence College	89.64	37
29	Texas A&M University (Mays)	89.58	34
30	University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)	89.43	1
31	Lipscomb University	89.30	43
32	University of Arizona (Eller)	89.14	51
33	Northeastern University (D’Amore-McKim)	89.03	16
34	University of Dayton	88.83	54
35	Seton Hall (Stillman)	88.40	61
36	Bowling Green State University (Schmidthorst)	88.23	75
37	University of Minnesota (Carlson)	88.16	24
38	University of Wisconsin-Madison	88.12	27
39	Marian University (Indianapolis)	87.76	60
40	Ohio University	87.74	72
41	Drexel University (LeBow)	87.71	62
42	University of Miami (Herbert)	87.61	22
43	University of New Hampshire (Paul)	87.50	63
44	University of Washington (Foster)	87.41	19
45	University of San Diego (Knauss)	87.31	52
46	Duquesne University (Palumbo Donahue)	87.26	68
47	University of Houston (Bauer)	87.14	41
48	Purdue University (Krannert)	87.03	32
49	Roger Williams University (Gabelli)	86.81	79
50	Saint Louis University (Chaifetz)	86.37	49
51	Florida Southern College	86.05	42
52	University of North Carolina-Wilmington	85.83	76
53	Syracuse University (Whitman)	85.63	36
54	Lehigh University	85.57	23
55	University of Denver (Daniels)	85.06	45
56	Loyola Marymount University	84.80	39
57	Worcester Polytechnic Institute	84.75	56
58	University of Oklahoma (Price)	84.74	73
59	University of South Carolina (Darla Moore)	84.43	47
60	Tulane University (Freeman)	84.23	31
61	Hofstra University (Zarb)	83.46	57
62	College of New Jersey	83.42	58
63	University of Texas at Dallas (Jindal)	82.97	69
64	University of Delaware (Lerner)	82.97	65
65	Ithaca College	82.96	66
66	Seattle University (Albers)	82.87	67
67	St. John’s University (Tobin)	82.06	50
68	University of the Pacific (Eberhardt)	81.72	81
69	Rutgers Business School – New Brunswick	81.57	44
70	Rutgers Business School – Newark	80.84	77
71	University of Kentucky (Gatton)	78.14	78
72	Rochester Institute of Technology (Saunders)	77.98	59
73	University of Michigan-Dearborn	77.83	71
74	Sacred Heart University	77.29	82
75	University of Evansville	76.71	53
76	Towson University	75.67	70
77	Michigan State University (Broad)	74.63	55
78	Wake Forest University	73.68	33
79	Northern Illinois University	69.18	86
80	Oregon State University	61.64	83
81	University of Georgia (Terry)	58.07	64
82	William & Mary (Mason)	55.85	48
83	Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper)	53.91	29
84	University of Utah (Eccles)	50.74	84
85	American University (Kogod)	50.26	80
86	Texas Tech University (Rawls)	30.62	87
87	Florida International University	17.72	85
88	University of Texas at Arlington	12.64	90
89	San Diego State University	9.67	88
90	University of Akron	4.80	89
91	University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Lubar)	0.07	91