The ranking comes from Poets&Quants, a business education outlet that released its survey results on Jan. 27.
The undergraduate business degree program at Elon’s Martha and Spencer Love School of Business ranks among the best in the country, according to new rankings from business education news outlet Poets&Quants.
Elon’s program ranks No. 35 in the nation in the survey by Poets&Quants, which conducts the most comprehensive assessment of undergraduate business programs at private and public institutions of all sizes. Among just private colleges and universities, Elon’s program ranked No. 21. The full announcement can be found here and the overall rankings are available here.
Raghu Tadepalli, dean of the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, said recognition in such a competitive ranking speaks to the quality of education the school delivers and the impact its alumni are having after they graduate.
“The Love School of Business ranks among the top business schools in the country thanks to dedicated faculty and staff who place student learning and success at the heart of what they do,” Tadepalli said. “The achievements of our alumni are a testament to the education and experiences they find at Elon.”
With a No. 35 ranking, Elon has reached one of the goals of the Boldly Elon strategic plan, which calls for achieving a top-40 ranking for the Love School of Business undergraduate and graduate programs.
Poets&Quants for Undergrads compiled the 2022 rankings based on a representative survey of over 5,400 alumni and school-reported data. The survey methodology focused on three main components — school admissions standards, alumni perspectives on the academic experience and employment outcomes data. Recent grads across the 95 schools were surveyed on aspects of faculty availability, extracurricular opportunities, and accessibility of the alumni network.
“We believe the quality of business education comes down to three core issues,” said Nathan Allen, project manager for Poets&Quants for Undergrads. “The quality of the raw talent coming through the door, what a school does with that talent over four years, and finally how the marketplace responds to the graduates coming off-campus.”
Elon achieved its highest marks in the area of academic experience, which was based on surveys of alumni who had been away from school for at least two years to determine how satisfied they were. Elon ranked No. 17 in the country in this category.
Among the questions alumni were asked were whether they would recommend the school to a friend, whether the business degree was worth the time and cost and how effective the career advising effort of the school was. Beyond a battery of 16 core questions, Poets&Quants asked alumni whether they had a “significant experience,” defined as a major consulting project, thesis, or other program feature instrumental to their professional development, or a meaningful global immersion, and if their first jobs after graduation were in their desired job functions, industries and companies.
Elon also received high marks in the area of career outcomes for alumni, which looked at the percentage of students with internships before graduation, with full-time jobs within three months of graduation along with average salary and signing bonuses for the Class of 2021. The ranking also took into consideration the percentage of the Class of 2021 that had internships before their senior year. For career outcomes, Elon ranked No. 25.
For admissions standards, the rankings considered average SAT scores for the last entering class, the percentage who finished in the top 10 percent of their classes in high school and the acceptance rate for the business school program, and other factors. Elon ranked No. 61 in this area.
The full methodology for the survey and rankings is available here.
Poets & Quants is headed by Editor-in-Chief John Byrne, who along with being the founder of C-Change Media formerly served as executive editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, Businessweek.com and Fast Company. He created the first regularly published rankings of business schools for Businessweek in 1988 and has authored several business school guidebooks.
Elon’s Love School of Business was one of four North Carolina schools to make the list, joining the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (No. 12), Wake Forest University (No. 20) and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (No. 58). The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania took the top spot in rankings for a fourth consecutive year.