Walton College Ranked 27th

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — For the first time, Business Week has ranked undergraduate business programs, placing the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas at No. 27 among the top public undergraduate programs.

In the ranking of the best schools, the Walton College placed 56th among the top private and public business schools, which appears in the May 8 edition of the magazine.

“We are very pleased with this ranking,” said Walton College Dean Dan Worrell. “Business Week has conducted an extensive survey and examined many quality aspects of a business school education. The specific results of the survey give us good perspective of how we are doing compared to peer schools and where we can improve. It also illustrates how nationally competitive the Walton College is.”

The Business Week rankings used five sources of data: a student survey; a recruiter survey; median starting salaries for graduates; the number of graduates admitted to the top 35 MBA programs; and an academic quality measure that consists of SAT/ACT test scores for business majors, full-time faculty-student ratios in the business program, average class size in core business classes, the percentage of business majors with internships, and the number of hours students spend preparing for class each week. The test score, faculty-student ratio and class size information was provided by the school, and the internship and hours of preparation data came from the student survey.

To be eligible for the Business Week survey, each school had to be accredited by AACSB International, the organization that accredits business schools worldwide, and exceed its cutoff for at least two of these three criteria: university-wide SAT and ACT scores, percentage of applicants accepted and percentage of students coming from the top 10 percent of their high school class.

Business Week started with 1,400 universities and colleges and narrowed that down to a list of 61 top business schools.

“We feel that the Business Week rankings validate the rankings from U.S. News & World Report,” said Bill Curington, Walton College senior associate dean for Academic Programs and Research. “We are very pleased to be included with these 61 schools and see that we rank favorable in several measures with some of the top schools.

“In the student survey, one area where the Walton College compares very favorably with the other schools is our Career Development Center services,” added Curington. “In addition, we scored well in teaching many of the key business subjects. We had the same scores at the top ten schools when it comes to a technology-enhanced learning environment.”

In August 2005, the Walton College was ranked in a tie for 24^th among the nation’s public undergraduate business schools by U.S. News & World Report’s “2006 America’s Best Colleges.” The college was ranked 40^th place among both public and private business schools. U.S. News & World Report surveyed business deans and senior faculty and ranked the schools on academic reputation.

Within the Southeastern Conference, only the University of Georgia (Tippie), University of Florida (Gainesville), and University of Tennessee ranked ahead of the Walton College in the Business Week rankings.

Business Week’s top undergraduate business programs are the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton); University of Virginia (McIntire); University of Notre Dame (Mendoza); Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan); and Emory University (Goizueta).