<p>aside from Wharton</p>
<p>how are these:</p>
<p>u.chicago</p>
<p>NU(northwestern)</p>
<p>NYU (Stern, but not really an “impressive” school)</p>
<p>See the Business Week Rankings</p>
<p><a href=“http://bwnt.businessweek.com/bschools/undergraduate/06rankings/index.asp?sortCol=median_starting_salary&sortOrder=DESC&pageNum=1&resultNum=100[/url]”>http://bwnt.businessweek.com/bschools/undergraduate/06rankings/index.asp?sortCol=median_starting_salary&sortOrder=DESC&pageNum=1&resultNum=100</a></p>
<p>If you click the column heads it will sort by starting salary which is sorta what you are asking. Also by “job placement” which they assign a letter grade to. Some of the starting salaries are skewed - Fordham because its grads all stay in NY - salaries are higher but so is cost of living so people who make $50k/ yr still need their parents to send them money for rent.</p>
<p>I don’t think Chicago and NW really have true undergrad business programs just econ majors which is not the same thing. In terms of “impressive” undergrad B-schools, after Wharton you have MIT and then the impressive level drops a lot - Michigan, Virginia, Carnegie Mellon, Notre Dame, etc. - schools that are otherwise not top tier academically in their other programs.</p>
<p>uhh, michigan isnt top tier in its other academic programs?..</p>
<p>you might have heard of michigan’s engineering program, which is number 6 or 7 in the nation. every single engineering major at michigan is top 10 with the exception of i think civil engineering (ranked 11 i believe). yea, not top tier? i would say it is. michigan is just overlooked for its incredible programs because it is a state school.</p>
<p>It’s all relative - USnews puts Michigan at #24 in national universities overall, tied with U VA. This is still a great showing given that there are thousands of colleges but significantly below say #9 Chicago or #14 Northwestern. You are still playing in the big leagues but you’re not in the starting lineup.</p>
<p>I’d draw the line between “top tier” and “second string” arbitrarily between #16 Hopkins and #17 Rice - all the schools from 1 to 16 are true top tier places. Beyond you have places like Emory , UNC, Notre Dame which while fine schools are clearly a step below the first group in prestige.</p>
<p>Even the 1st group can be broken into the starting 6 HYPMSC and then the next 10 (rest of Ivies plus Duke, Wash U, Chi, NW and JH), which really puts Michigan in tier 3.</p>
<p>I’m talking overall undergrad, not B-schools and it’s all bragging rights - you’re talking about whether you are at the very top of a tall mountain or a few feet below the summit when most schools are way down in the valley and any one of them is an honor to get into, so no insult to Mich intended.</p>
<p>US News is not very accurate…there is no way harvard is the best school in the country. just b/c its ivy doesnt mean its the best. MIT is MUCH better.</p>
<p>MIT is better in its own areas of focus like engineering, not everything-ing.</p>
<p>And Michigan’s programs may be great for research reputation, but for education (and doubly so for undergrads), state schools tend to suffer as the average class size is significantly larger)</p>
<p>While USNews is not perfect it gives you a general idea (and that’s all it gives you - the rankings really mean almost nothing) - maybe a few of the schools could go up or down 2 or 3 places in the overall rank (and they do from year to year even in USNews), but if one school is #24 (Michigan) and another is #9 (Chicago) it’s unlikely to be an error. And again these are overall rankings so it says nothing about a particular program - Penn’s undergraduate business (Wharton) school (#1) is above Penn’s overall rank (#7) , its undergrad engineering school is way below Penn’s overall rank (an embarrassingly low #28 ). The USNews rank is in some sense an average but you can’t attend an “average” program, you have to pick a particular division. So pointing out some particular program at some school that is better than the school’s overall rank doesn’t prove anything, except that you shouldn’t rely too much on the overall ranks when picking a school.</p>
<p>On the other hand, you are probably better off attending a low ranked program at a high ranked school than vice versa because some of the school’s overall glory will rub off on you in the job market. For example, BusinessWeek puts MIT at #4 in undergrad business behind #3 Notre Dame. Is there any question that recruiters would prefer the MIT grad? You could argue that BW’s ranking are just plain wrong but they have their reasons - for one thing the MIT program is a 3 year program - you take not a single business course freshman year and instead study things like physics and chemistry that are really of no value to most b-school grads unless they are going into a technical field.</p>