BusinessWeek magazine recently ranked the Commerce School the second-best American undergraduate business program. Though this is the third consecutive year the Commerce School ranked second, it gained ground this year on the No. 1 school, the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
The magazine ranks schools using an index number calculated from responses to student and recruiter surveys, the median starting salary for program graduates, the number of graduates entering top MBA programs and academic quality, according to BusinessWeek business school editor Louis Lavelle. The top school, he added, is given an index number of 100, and the other schools' index numbers are relative to that school's grade.
The Wharton School ranked first for the third consecutive year. McIntire had an index number of 99, and Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business was ranked third with 96.7.
"We were as close as you can be [to Wharton] without being first," Commerce School Communications Director Jim Travisano said. "That's pretty astonishing."
Lavelle noted that the top three schools in the magazine's rankings are in a class by themselves.
"The gap between them [and other business programs] seems to get larger and more solidified every year," Lavelle said.
While the gap between the top schools and others widened, the gap between the Commerce School and Wharton narrowed this year; Lavelle noted that the University "really gained on Wharton this year."
Last year, the University had an index number of 92.7, he said, maintaining that the slimming margin was due in part to a slight slippage on Wharton's part and gains on the University's end.
One reason the Commerce School finished so high, Lavelle said, was the fact that the Commerce School had the highest student satisfaction ranking of any of the ranked schools.
Commerce Dean Carl Zeithaml said he believes students reported high satisfaction levels because "students really engage with the school. You get out of it what you put into it, and our students put a lot into it. They feel a great sense of satisfaction."
The BusinessWeek analysis, however, suggested the Commerce School still has room for improvement. One thing that held the Commerce School back, Lavelle noted, was the recruiter survey portion of the ratings process. Lavelle said he thought the University's lower recruiter ranking in comparison to past years was "weird, because the [median starting] salaries are going up."
Lavelle added that the rankings showed a general trend of increasing salaries for recent graduates of business programs.
Salaries "increased more than American salaries in general and more than inflation," Lavelle said.
Zeithaml emphasized that although he was very pleased with the Commerce School's high ranking, the school does not focus a great deal on rankings.
"We know we can always work harder and do better, no matter what the rankings say," Zeithaml said, noting his school's goal is to provide the absolute best experience for students.
"We do our best and we want to make sure that we're always among the elite, but it's more important that we keep doing the right things and let the rankings take care of themselves," he noted.
The Commerce School aims to maintain its status as a top school in the future, Zeithaml said, by continuing to develop new programs and by investing in staff.
"The thing about U.Va. is that it's good at everything, and they do it all as a public university," Lavelle said. "That's a program that's really firing on all cylinders ... Who knows, maybe we'll see U.Va. at the top one of these days"
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