If there’s one thing our readers love, it’s a good ranking.
Year after year, the most clicked stories on Poets&Quants For Undergrads are those from our own proprietary ranking of the Best Undergraduate Business Schools in the U.S., or articles analyzing rankings data from other publications.
Data-loving quants come to us for all the different ways metrics can be sliced and diced to tell the story about the most valuable college degrees in general, and business degrees in particular.
But don’t despair, poets. There are several selections on this year’s list for you as well. These include our popular collections of the top undergrad professors, Best and Brightest business school majors, and the business schools to watch in the coming year.
Whether you are a poet or a quant, we hope you enjoy taking a look back at the year that was. Our list of the 10 most-read stories of 2024 is presented below in descending order.
10. 50 Best Undergraduate Business Professors of 2024
One of P&Q’s most popular collections is our 50 Best Undergraduate Business School Professors. This year, we received more than 1,000 nominations from students, alumni, colleagues, and school deans taking the time to put into words what these outstanding professors meant to their students, their departments, and the business community at large.
Nominations came from more than 60 of the best undergraduate business programs, including a dozen international schools.
2024’s list features 19 women, including Stephanie E. Raible, 41, Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and the Faculty Director of Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship at University of Delaware’s Lerner College of Business and Economics. This coming year, she will be a Fulbright Scholar and Visiting Professor at Management Center Innsbruck in Austria.
If she had her way, business schools would spend more time studying and discussing societal and environmental dilemmas. “Business plays such a key part in change, future business leaders need to prepare for a world that is more complex and interconnected. To accomplish big things, students need to learn to speak to and work with people who don’t think like them,” she says.
“Business schools are well positioned to reinforce and inform because we teach students how to think, not what to think.”
See the full list, and read through the professor profiles, here.
9. An Explosion In Demand For Kelley’s Undergrad Business Program
Applications to study undergraduate business at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business are exploding. This year, a record 27,000 candidates applied for admission, up from last year’s record 21,000 and 18,000 two years ago.
Those 27,000 applicants are vying for 2,000 open class seats or 13.5 candidates for every open slot. The 28.6% year-over-year increase in apps at Kelley compares to a 6% increase in applicants at undergraduate colleges overall this year (see College Applications Surge for Fall 2024 Admissions).
“It is staggering,” says Patrick Hopkins, vice dean at Kelley. “And on top of that the quality is up and off the charts. So we are selecting the cream of the crop. Our admissions team is working around the clock to get the apps processed.”
