For the third year in a row, the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce was ranked the fourth best undergraduate business program in the U.S., and the highest ranking public university overall by business education website Poets&Quants for Undergrads.
Though sharing the #4 spot on Poets&Quants’ annual list with Georgetown University’s McDonough, the Commerce School scored a total of 278.9 points out of 300 to Georgetown’s 277.8. Notably, McIntire earned the #3 ranking for its renowned academic experience based on surveys completed by three years of alumni from more than 100 leading U.S. business schools, achieving a nearly perfect index score of 99.5 out of 100.
The perennial strong showing is the result of high marks received across three equally weighted categories, measuring each school’s ability to foster, challenge, and develop students’ minds (academic experience); the quality and diversity of a program’s students (admissions standards); and the world’s top employers’ responses to those graduates (career outcomes).
Survey topics to determine those results ranged from alumni grading the quality of their professors to evaluating the effectiveness of their school’s career advising services. Questions on academic experience also included what Poets&Quants calls a “significant experience” during their education that could “include a major consulting project, thesis, or other program feature instrumental to their professional development, or a meaningful global immersion.”
