According to the PAR survey, the top accounting undergraduate program in the United States is at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Champaign, Illinois. Other schools listed in the top five were, in order: University of Texas at Austin; Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah; University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana; University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California. All five schools were in the top five rankings the previous year as well. However, University of Texas at Austin and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign switched positions.
Public Accounting Report lists the schools ranked six through ten. in order, as: Indiana University-Bloomington in Bloomington, Indiana; University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia; Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan; Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio; and University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. University of Florida had the distinction of making the greatest improvement in ranking: from 21 in 2008 to number ten in 2009.
The 11th and 12th ranked undergraduate accounting schools on the report were: Penn State University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. Tied for 13th place were University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, and University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, Wisconsin. Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, ranked fifteenth.
The report awarded 16th place to Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, followed by Miami University in Oxford, Ohio; Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi, and University of Missouri-Columbia in Columbia, Missouri.
Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois dropped from 13th place to 21st in the report. The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. followed and then came Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts and Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. Two schools tied for 24th, the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which dropped from 15th, and Baruch College-The City of New York, New York.