Robins School ranked among top programs

BusinessWeek magazine has ranked Richmond’s Robins School of Business one of the top undergraduate business programs in the country.

The Robins School ranked 25th on the magazine’s inaugural list of the top programs.

Business Week based its rankings on surveys of some 100,000 business students, as well as around 2,000 corporate recruiters. Other factors included starting salaries of business graduates, the number of business graduates who enroll in the top-ranked M.B.A. programs, and several measures of academic quality, such as faculty-student ratios and average S.A.T. scores.

“The Robins School of Business is honored to have been selected as one of the top 25 undergraduate business programs in the nation,” said Jorge Haddock, the school’s dean. “This prestigious ranking showcases our commitment to excellence in creating a challenging and engaging academic environment dedicated to preparing our students for future success. Ultimately, it is a tribute to the quality of our students and faculty.”

The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School ranked first, followed by the University of Virginia, University of Notre Dame, MIT and Emory University. Richmond is one of 482 undergraduate business programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. The Robins School also is one of only 168 business schools which have additional specialized accreditation of their accounting programs by AACSB.

When BusinessWeek announced its rankings of the best undergraduate business programs in the country, the Robins School surprised some observers when it cracked the top 25. In an online chat with the BusinessWeek editors who supervised the project, one reader asked how Richmond, which had never made the top 50 in other magazines’ lists, showed up among the best.

“This is a question we were hearing a lot in the last week,” replied staff editor Geoff Groeckels. “The simple answer is that no one has ever looked at undergraduate business programs in the way we have.”

“In Richmond’s case, they received the highest marks possible in teaching quality and were ranked number three in academic quality, which includes items such as S.A.T. scores and the amount of time students spend studying each week,” he explained.

Business schools editor Louis Lavelle, in response to a subsequent question, said that academic quality measures accounted for 30 percent of a school’s final rank.

“Academic quality was measured by looking at S.A.T. scores, faculty/student ratios, average class size, number of business majors with internships, how much time students spent studying,” Lavelle wrote.

Richmond had the fifth best student- faculty ratio—11 to 1—of all schools ranked. Also, only 13 business schools showed median starting salaries higher than those of Robins School graduates.