McIntire School tops in nation, says magazine

The University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce jumped to the top spot on BusinessWeek’s fourth annual ranking of “The Best Undergrad Business Schools.”

Rounding out the top five are Notre Dame (Mendoza), University of Pennsylvania (Wharton), University of Michigan (Ross) and Brigham Young University (Marriott).

With 54 percent of responding seniors lacking a job offer as of January (compared with 44 percent in 2008), the schools that excelled in BusinessWeek’s survey focused on guiding students through the career search.

The McIntire School, where nearly three of four seniors have job offers, topped the list largely because of the school’s effort to build student-recruiter relationships.

The same applies to second-ranked Notre Dame, where administrators tap the school’s well-connected alumni network to scout jobs and offer advice to students. Both overtook the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, which fell to third place after three years at the top.

To rank these programs, BusinessWeek used nine measures, including surveys of 85,000 senior business majors and nearly 600 corporate recruiters.

BusinessWeek also calculated an academic quality rating for each program by combining SAT scores, student-faculty ratios, class size, the percentage of students with internships and the number of hours students devote to class work.