More kids—and better qualified ones—are studying business in college. And they’re nailing fatter salaries when they get out. Meanwhile, academic programs are acquirement more specialized

By Geoff Gloeckler

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There is at least one fortress in the business world at which place mostly of the news is good: undergraduate business cultivation. The sum up of high school seniors who say they intend to earn a business degree is increasing. Those who entered a business program in 2007 boasted higher standardized test scores than last year’s freshmen. And graduates are leaving with bigger salaries. The big-name schools are competing more fiercely for these qualified students, with everything from new buildings to in greater numbers tailored study-abroad programs. Others are trying to construct edifices national reputations by niche programs that take favorable opportunity of their location to prepare students as far as concerns jobs in a particular industry.

The competition is obvious in accordance through duty at the very top of our third annual ranking of undergraduate B-schools. The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School once afresh was deemed the best program. But it has an increasingly strong rival in the University of Virginia. In divers of the measures we use to resolve our ranking, the two schools were virtually the same. And we wish a new No. 3 this year: the University of Notre Dame, which displaced the University of California at Berkeley (it slipped down to No. 11).

To line these programs, BusinessWeek uses nine distinct measures, including surveys of some 80,000 business majors and besides than 600 corporate recruiters, the median starting salaries for graduates, and the number of graduates each program sends on to the preeminent MBA programs (we rank those, too, in November every other year). We in like manner calculate an academic quality score for the undergraduate schools by combining SAT scores, faculty-student ratios, rank size, the percentage of students with internships, and the number of hours students incur expense on class work each week.

So here’s what went down in the Wharton-Virginia contest. Student and recruiter satisfaction with Wharton ebbed somewhat, while Virginia received the highest ratings from its students of any of the 96 schools we ranked. The occurrence that graduates’ medial sum starting salary increased by dint of. $5,500—or more than 10%—to $58,000, had a agreeable deal to do with that.

There’s no discounting the importance of the dollar sign. Notre Dame’session academic quality improved somewhat this year; the main reason it moved up four spots on our selvage is because of its students’ success in the job place of traffic. Salaries increased nearly 10% there. When we looked at graduates of our top 25 schools, we build they are making an average of $54,445, which is $3,000 more than last year. As a percentage (5.8% to be exact), that increase is a full two points higher than the national mean proportion. At sundry schools, including Babson College and Washington University in St. Louis, the rise in graduates’ salaries was even bigger. That’s for the reason that more of their students took positions in that most lucrative (in 2007, anyway) of industries: investment banking. At 19th-ranked Georgetown University, 94 seniors, or 29% of the graduating class, accepted i-banking jobs, compared with 63 the year before. That pushed the median starting salary up $5,000, to $60,000—on par with Wharton, Michigan (No. 6), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (No. 9).

The relationship betwixt Wall Street and our top-tier schools can’t be matched by others. But it can be replicated by other industries. Consider these four programs that have distinguished themselves by going local: The University of Houston, in the heart of the nation’s oil capital, is training the next generation of energy executives, while Florida State University offers a professional golf management program. The University of Louisville specializes in equine prudent conduct. Belmont University is using its Nashville locale to alleviate students lessen the force of into the music business. For these schools, it’s all about finding their prompted by emulation advantage.

Houston is home to oil giants BP (BP), ConocoPhillips (COP), and Royal Dutch Shell (RDS), along with hundreds of other smaller energy companies. But until 2001, when the University of Houston’s Bauer College of Business (No. 82) launched the Global Energy Management Institute, there were no dealing school programs nearby that focused on the industry. It has been a gusher always since: Most of last year’s 21 students graduated with high-paying jobs. Now, to keep up with changes in the craft, the institute is developing new electives focused in succession alternative energy. The leading course, Carbon Trading, resoluteness be taught nearest bend.

There are no fewer than 20 universities offering a professional golf management degree. But Florida State (No. 69) is the only one with a curriculum that includes all the core courses in the business school and the hospitality program. Students, 40% of them from out of parade, learn about course and tournament operations, sward treatment, and club design—as well as catering and restaurant control. Oh, and they need a 12 handicap to get in and be obliged to shoot 78s over two consecutive rounds in order to graduate. Everyone who has graduated in such a manner far has ended up with a job in the business.

The prospects for graduates of Louisville’s equine management program (the B-school is No. 92) and Belmont’s music business program (No. 89) are a petty more cheery than you might expect. Thanks to Seabiscuit and Barbaro, horse racing is big again. Churchill Downs, where the Kentucky Derby has been held since 1875, is hiring. At Belmont, whose graduates embrace rude music stars Trisha Yearwood and Brad Paisley, menstrual flux in copyright principle and electronic media help prepare students for a digital world. But the positive extend is the internships—and the fortuity to make connections, that is how most people get their fit in the vocation.