It’s Wharton again: U.S. News & World Report has once again bestowed top honors on the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious business school in its annual rankings of undergraduate business schools.
Wharton was No. 1 in last year’s ranking, and the year before that, and the year before that, and has also been the top business school in Poets&Quants’ undergraduate rankings for six of the last seven years.
In the U.S. News 2025 business school rankings, most of the top 10 schools remained the same as last year, with MIT and University of California, Berkeley again tied for second place, followed by the University of Michigan and New York University to complete the top five. The University of Texas at Austin dropped from fifth to sixth place, while Carnegie Mellon University rose from seventh to sixth place.
Among the 13 individual rankings for business majors, Wharton, with an undergraduate enrollment of 9,995 for the fall 2023 semester, was again the biggest winner, earning top-five rankings in analytics, finance (No. 1), international business, management (also No. 1), marketing, operations management, quantitative analysis and real estate. The school’s parent institution, the University of Pennsylvania, ranked No. 10 overall in the Best Colleges and Universities.
Top 10 (actually 11) Undergraduate Business Schools in U.S. News
2025 ranking
school
State/Province
2024 Rank
2023 Ranking
1
University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
P
1
1
2
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts
2
2
2
University of California, Berkeley (Haas)
Canada
2
2
4
University of Michigan (Ross)
Michigan
4
4
5
New York University (Stern)
new york
5
5
6
University of Texas at Austin (McCombs)
Texas
5
7
6
Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper)
P
7
5
6
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Kennan-Flagler)
North Carolina
8
8
9
Cornell University (Dyson)
new york
8
8
9
Indiana University (Kelly)
in
8
8
9
University of Southern California (Marshall)
Canada
8
8
Many Bonds
U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of best undergraduate business programs is based on the judgments of deans and senior faculty from peer institutions who participated in a peer evaluation survey. The magazine surveyed deans and senior faculty from all 532 undergraduate business programs accredited by AACSB International for spring and summer 2024 and ranked all 532 programs. Respondents (two from each AACSB-accredited business program) rated the quality of all the programs they knew on a five-point scale: very good (5), good (4), excellent (3), fair (2), or near-excellent (1).
This year’s business survey response rate was 46.9%, down from 49.9% last year.
The magazine’s methodology results in a lot of ties. In the top 10 alone, there were three schools tied for sixth place and three more tied for ninth place, making the top 10 actually a top 11. Lower down the rankings, there were four schools tied for 14th place, five for 18th place, four for 23rd place, nine for 27th place, four for 36th place, 13 for 40th place, 12 for 53rd place, 12 for 65th place, 17 for 77th place, and 20 (!) for 94th place.
Notable jumps and drops
Notable ranking changes included Washington University in St. Louis, whose Olin Business School dropped from 13 to 18, and two Midwestern schools, Ohio State University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, both of which rose from 17 to 14.
The University of Oklahoma saw the largest increase in ranking, moving from 70 to 53, while the Air Force Academy rose from 84 to 65. The largest declines were for Texas Christian University, down from 70 to 94, and Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, both dropping from 47 to 65. Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge dropped from 84 to 114, dropping out of the top 100 entirely.
By state, California had the most business schools on the list with 11, followed by New York (10), Texas (9), Massachusetts (8), and Pennsylvania (7).
US NEWS 2024-2025 Top 10 Best National Universities
University 2025 2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 Princeton University 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2 2 2 2 4 3 3 5 7 7 7 Harvard University 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 Stanford University 4 3 3 6 6 6 7 5 5 4 4 Yale University 5 5 3 5 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 Johns Hopkins University 6 9 7 9 9 10 10 11 10 10 12 California Institute of Technology 6 7 9 9 9 12 12 10 12 10 10 Duke University 6 7 10 9 12 10 8 9 8 8 8 Northwestern University 6 9 10 9 9 9 10 11 12 12 13 University of Pennsylvania 10 6 7 8 8 6 8 8 8 9 8 Source: US NEWS
The Daily Pennsylvanian was right.
The list of best undergraduate business schools is published as part of the magazine’s ranking of the best American universities. The Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper of the University of Pennsylvania, published a preliminary version of the top 10 ranking of the best American universities on September 10. The magazine claimed that the student newspaper’s publication was only a provisional list, but the results were accurate.
In the overall university and college rankings, Princeton University ranked first for the 10th consecutive year, MIT ranked second for the fourth consecutive year, and Harvard University ranked third for the third consecutive year. Stanford University dropped from third place in 2023-2024 to fourth place, and Yale University remained in fifth place, the same as last year. See above for the rest of the top 10.
The University of Pennsylvania dropped from sixth to tenth, its lowest ranking since 13th in 1997. The university is home to the Wharton School, which ranked first in Poets & Quant’s most recent undergraduate business program rankings and was ranked fourth in the 2010 U.S. News college rankings.
See the next page for U.S. News rankings of schools by business specialization, and page 3 for the top 100 U.S. undergraduate business schools.