The Best Universities for Business Studies

Notre Dame

• The number one university for business studies in 2010, according to BusinessWeek, is the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana.

  Notre Dame is a private school with an average enrollment of 1,750 students. The median starting salary for new graduates is $55,000. The school earned an A+ in each of the three categories for teaching quality, facilities and service, and job placement.

  While the students surveyed earned top ranking for this school, academic quality was ranked 19 out of 111 for this school. Academic quality weighs the SAT scores of the incoming students, faculty to student ratio, average class size, and the number of outside hours spent on classwork.

University of Virginia

• For a less expensive program, consider the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, a public school, whose tuition is 25 percent of Notre Dame's tuition. The University of Virginia ranked number two in BusinessWeek's survey, down from the top slot in 2009.

  The average SAT score was slightly lower than Notre Dame and the median starting salary is the same at $55,000. However, the University of Virginia earned an A+ for each of the three categories of teaching quality, facilities and service, and job placement. In addition, the University of Virginia ranked 7th for academic quality compared to Notre Dame's 19th rank.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Private college MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is most well-known for its engineering and aeronautical studies, but it also ranks third in the United States for business studies. Student surveys for MIT were quite a bit lower than Virginia and Notre Dame, but the average starting salary for graduates was $62,000.

  The faculty to student ratio was 1.8, quite a bit lower than the average of 15 to 1 for the top two schools. However, the school ranked a B for teaching quality, and an A for each of the facilities and service and job placement categories. Academic quality ranked third, the highest of the top three schools.

University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)

• Famed Penn's Wharton School of Business, another private school located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, ranked number four, down from third in the 2009 survey.

  The average starting salary for new graduates is $60,000 and the student survey ranked Wharton 15th. The school earned an A for facilities and service, and job placement, and a B for teaching quality. However, academic quality ranked number one, and the faculty to student ratio is 11 to 1.