UPDATED: October 29, 2021
In the latest survey from U.S. News & World Report, the Boston College Carroll School of Management has continued to stand among the nation’s most highly ranked business schools—with three departments in the top 20 and other programs on the rise.
Overall, the Carroll School placed 30th out of 514 schools, in the U.S. News annual survey of undergraduate business programs. Among business schools at private institutions, the Carroll School ranked no. 11. That is just behind its counterparts at Emory, Georgetown, and Washington University in St. Louis, and tied with Johns Hopkins.
The other private institutions ahead of Boston College were (in order of rankings) University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Notre Dame, and University of Southern California.
In addition, three Carroll School undergraduate programs landed in the top 20 of their disciplines.
Finance (7th) and Accounting (12th) held their lofty positions, while Marketing rose three notches to no. 17. Meanwhile, three Carroll School academic programs previously unranked in the U.S. News survey turned up in the top 30. These were Management (23rd), Analytics (27th), and Entrepreneurship (21st).
The methodology used by U.S. News in its survey of business programs is purely reputational—in other words, “based solely on the judgments of deans and senior faculty members at peer institutions,” according to the publication’s website.
#7 Again
After ranking 7th in the nation in U.S. News & World Report’s tally of “Best Undergraduate Finance Programs” of 2021, the Carroll School’s Finance Department has landed at no. 7 again, this time on a comprehensive global rankings list.
The Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS) surveys departments at more than 1,800 universities across 93 countries and regions. Run by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, an independent higher education organization, the GRAS methodology uses “a range of objective academic indicators and third-party data” to measure university departments across indicators including research output, research influence, international collaboration, research quality, and international academic awards.
The Finance Department’s 7th-place GRAS ranking is an all-time high, climbing 31 spots since its no. 38 rank on the first GRAS list, published in 2017.
“#7 Again” Continued »
By comparison, Poets & Quants conducts prominent business-school surveys that draw on a more comprehensive methodology, including admissions and alumni data among other factors. The Carroll School placed 13th in those rankings released in late 2019 (many schools including the Carroll School opted out of the most recent P&Q rankings for COVID-related reasons). In that survey, P&Q also named the Carroll School #1 for undergraduate teaching.
U.S. News released its 2022 “Best Undergraduate Business Programs Rankings” on Sept. 13, along with its broader survey of national universities. Boston College as a whole placed highly as well, notwithstanding a 2019 shift in U.S. News methodology that skews toward state universities.
— William Bole, Carroll School News