10 Undergraduate Business Schools To Watch In 2025

 

Miami University Farmer School of Business

Ten years ago, Miami University’s Farmer School of Business in Oxford, Ohio, redesigned its entrepreneurship program around creativity and “learning by doing.”

Today, almost a quarter of the University’s undergrad population takes at least one entrepreneurship-themed course, and Farmer’s entrepreneurship co-major typically attracts at least one student from every undergraduate major on campus.

Miami graduates have launched more than 360 ventures, raising more than $535 million since 2013. This includes Emil Barr, a 2024 graduate, who created two multi-million dollar startups as a Farmer undergrad.

“Where Miami University excelled was bringing in people who had actually built companies. Those introductions changed my life,” Barr told us. “I had three conversations, each easily worth over a million dollars, that happened during my time at Miami.”

Farmer students are made career ready from their very first day, starting in the First-Year Integrated Core (FYIC).

“Our graduates enter the workforce with a rare blend of technical fluency, human-centered thinking, and confident communication,” says Dean Jenny Darroch. “They’ve engaged in experiential learning from day one, pitching to real clients, managing portfolios, and leading teams.”

And momentum continues to build. Farmer applications are up more than 70% in the last five years, while the admit rate has dropped to around 55%. For the class of 2024, 96% of graduates found jobs within three months, up 10 percentage points from the previous class, according to data submitted for P&Q’s 2025 ranking of the Best Undergraduate Business Programs in the U.S.

Farmer is also expanding its interdisciplinary offerings in areas like cybersecurity, healthcare sales, and sustainability, giving students the tools to apply business principles to some of today’s most complex challenges. A new minor and certificate in artificial intelligence, launching next year, will push that even further by pairing technical skills with ethical and data privacy training.

In 2026, Farmer will debut its Future-Ready Student Success Framework built on employer feedback. The framework guides students to intentionally build the skills needed in a world of automation, global complexity, and rapid technological change. It’s all part of Farmer’s long game: to prepare students not just for their first job, but for careers shaped by constant reinvention.

Q&A WITH JENNY DARROCH

We reached out to Jenny Darroch, Dean of the Farmer School of Business, to tell us about the defining attributes of a Farmer business degree.

What are recent and upcoming program developments and innovations that will enhance the experience of future students?

The Farmer School of Business is actively preparing students to lead in a dynamic, tech-driven world. We continually engage and solicit feedback from our industry partners to ensure both academic and co-curricular offerings are attuned to current—and future—market needs. Our success is grounded in our graduates who are beyond ready to add value to any organization from day one.

Recent innovations include:

• Continuing to embed high-impact career practices across the curriculum (e.g., case competitions, pitch competitions, client challenges)
• Interdisciplinary offerings in cybersecurity, healthcare sales and sustainability
• Expanding digital literacy to ensure all students graduate with strong data fluency and tech proficiency regardless of their concentration

We plan to launch a minor and certificate in AI next year that emphasizes technical skills, ethical and data privacy considerations, and helps shape students’ understanding of industry-specific applications.

Any other notable news coming for 2025 that readers should know?

We believe that business success will be driven by those who can navigate rapid technological change, collaborate across disciplines, and exercise sound judgment in a world shaped by AI, automation, and global complexity. Employers across industries—from tech and consulting to CPG and capital markets—agree, foundational skills are no longer enough. Graduates must be cognitively agile, emotionally intelligent, and ethically grounded. To meet this challenge, our goal is to develop future leaders who can do both. This will anchor our strategy over the next few years.

In academic year (AY) 2026, we will debut a Future-Ready Student Success Framework that helps students intentionally develop competencies employers have identified as essential for the next decade.

To meet the growing national demand for business education, we are creating a new pathway for high-achieving non-business students in AY 2026 called X+Business. The X+Business program is designed for students who have declared a non-business major but recognize the value of business knowledge in enhancing their career outcomes. To successfully enter the X+Business program, students must first complete the requirements for a business minor and then apply to a competitive Business Leadership program. Upon successful completion of the business leadership program, students will graduate with a co-major in business.

What are your program’s two biggest differentiators from other top undergraduate business programs? How do these prepare students for their careers?

Unlike schools where career prep is an add-on, at the Farmer School of Business, professional development is integrated into every aspect of the student experience—from the first semester with the First Year Integrated Core (FYIC) through graduation. We refer to this as our “Careers Everywhere” strategy.

Second is our strong student-centered culture, which is grounded in relatively small class sizes, accessible faculty, and a tight-knit community of students, faculty, staff, employers and alumni. This intentional approach ensures students are known, mentored, and pushed to lead early and often.

Together, these differentiators translate to exceptional internship access, leadership readiness, and job placement results.

What separates your graduates from other business school graduates?

Our graduates enter the workforce with a rare blend of technical fluency, human-centered thinking, and confident communication. They’ve engaged in experiential learning from day one—pitching to real clients, managing portfolios, and leading teams. Employers tell us they’re not just capable—they’re ready. FSB students don’t wait for permission to lead; they show up with initiative, resilience, and professionalism that exceeds expectations.

We attribute this, in part, to the Farmer School of Business at Miami University’s location in Oxford, Ohio. Oxford is a beautiful, small college town located in rural Ohio about an hour away from Cincinnati. We often say that there is a type of student who thrives here: someone who has a strong sense of community and who is willing to collaborate with others. Someone who will take initiative and find opportunities to get involved, and who is motivated to learn new things outside of class. Our alumni speak highly of the experience they had at Miami and the life-time friends they made. Employers often refer to our students as having strong Midwestern values: hard work, humility, honesty, and a strong sense of community and family.

We are a large business school of 5,000 students in a mid-sized university of 20,000 students. Miami is, at its core, a liberal arts university, meaning students have access to a breadth of disciplines and meet their general education requirements via the Miami Plan. Many of our alumni speak fondly about the range of non-business courses they take and just how much they enjoyed them. We also find that many of our students choose to pursue double majors or multiple minors that reflect their vast interests (e.g., finance and music composition).

This liberal arts foundation, combined with strong business training, gives our graduates a powerful head start in cross-functional collaboration upon entering the workforce.

Explain the career services, programming, and extracurriculars that give your students an advantage in career outcomes?

Our approach is built around the idea that students need early, frequent, and meaningful exposure to career options. Our First Year Integrated Core (FYIC) combines foundational business coursework with hands-on, team-based projects and an early focus on career exploration—covering essentials such as developing their LinkedIn profile and resume and how to effectively network.

In their first semester, all students participate in the Major Exploration Conference, which showcases our nine majors and features alumni and faculty panels that discuss each major and its related career pathways.

We also support and work closely with more than 40 student organizations. This has been an intentional strategy to better integrate student organizations into the fabric of the school, to broaden their outreach to employers and alumni, and to strengthen support for activities that might lead to career outcomes.

Our “Careers Everywhere” strategy ensures FSB students have access to dedicated business career advisors, major-specific coaching, and one of the nation’s most robust internship pipelines.

When alumni look back on their time in your undergraduate business program, what would they consider to be their signature experience?

When we talk to alumni, they almost always bring up their transformative student experience—a combination of meaningful faculty mentorship, early leadership opportunities, and high-stakes experiential learning.

Alumni often start by reflecting on the First-Year Integrated Core (FYIC), saying that it’s where they began to build foundational business skills, learn how to work in teams, and start seeing themselves as business professionals. FYIC is also where many students find their community. First-semester teams often turn into study groups, student org co-founders, even lifelong friends.

Then our alumni will talk about studying abroad. Programs like FSB London—a 6-week internship abroad—and Miami’s campus in Luxembourg tend to come up again and again and it’s clear those experiences shift something for our students. Students return from these deeply immersive global opportunities more confident and with a broader perspective around how business functions around the world.

More recently, alumni have highlighted what they call “high-stakes” experiences—case competitions, substantive client consulting projects, Social Innovation Weekend, or the RedHawk Pitch Competition—where they step outside their comfort zones, present to executives, and begin to build their professional reputations. These moments are often what set them apart in competitive job markets.

What ties everything together is the “Farmer Family,” which our alumni carry with them long past graduation. It’s a community that holds them to high standards while giving them the tools and confidence to succeed.

What is the most underrated feature of your undergraduate business program and how does it enhance the experience for your business majors?

The most underrated feature of FSB is our intentional integration of liberal arts into the business curriculum. Our students take philosophy, political science, and global perspectives seriously—and it shows in how they reason, write, and lead. This broad intellectual grounding enhances ethical decision-making, global awareness, and emotional intelligence—traits increasingly sought after in leadership roles.

We always talk about the tight knit community students join when they come to FSB but I don’t think prospective students fully value it until they are here. What this means is that students form friendships that last forever, faculty care deeply about students and their student success, students work with faculty on site visits, case competitions, pitch competitions and research projects, and students stay in touch with their faculty throughout their careers.

Which employers are the biggest consumers of your undergraduate talent and what have they told you about your alumni that make them so special?

Top employers recruiting our students include EY, PwC, Deloitte, KPMG, Fifth Third Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Abercrombie & Fitch, P&G, Terillium, and DHL.

Employers feedback is consistent: “Your students are exceptionally well-prepared—sharp, articulate, coachable, and confident.” Employers particularly note how our students thrive in ambiguity, ask thoughtful questions, and build trust quickly in teams.

What else would you like readers to know about your program?

Over the past five years, we have worked hard to elevate the Farmer School of Business brand by doubling down on the things we know we do well: deliver a transformational student experience, offer a strong ROI, and graduate students who are extremely employable and in-demand.

Our results speak for themselves:

• Applications to FSB are up over 70% and our admit rate has come down from 81.9% in Fall 2020 to around 55% for Fall 2025
• Our first to second year retention rate is nearly 95%, this is, in large part, due to our incredible group of professional academic advisors who proactively reach out to our students, as well as offer additional resources to students who need help navigating higher education.
• In AY2024, we raised almost $30 million in cash to support all aspects of the FSB thanks to our amazing group of alumni who are not only willing to give their financial support but their time and talent as well

We know we are not just preparing students for their first job—we’re preparing them for careers that span industries, technologies, and global shifts. We focus relentlessly on graduating future-ready leaders by bringing employers into the classroom, and building student resilience. We believe that if you want a business school that develops who you are as much as what you know, then Farmer is the place.

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