The A. B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University finished No. 35 on P&Q’s 2025 ranking of the Best Undergraduate Business Programs in the U.S. In our three methodological categories, it finished No. 20 in Admission Standards, No. 72 in Career Outcomes, and No. 66 in Academic Experience (based solely on our alumni survey).
The B-school’s acceptance rate for the fall 2024 incoming class was 13% while its average SAT score was 1430. Its six-year graduation rate of 85.5%.
In career data, 81% of Class of 2024 graduates and 46.6% of Class of 2023 grads completed at least one business-specific internship before graduation. Some 86.5% of 2024 grads found jobs within three months, compared to 77.3% of 2023 grads.
Average salary for the most recent graduates was $76,986, with 10.5% of them reporting an average signing bonus of $6,375.
FLEXIBLE INTERDISCIPLINARY EDUCATION
One of the key characteristics of the Freeman education is the academic freedom and flexibility it offers students. Tsetsa Dankova Rosensteel, the Assistant Dean of Administration and Finance at Freeman, describes it best: “One College. Five Schools. No Boundaries.”
Each student can choose to attend any of the five schools (Liberal Arts, Science and Engineering, Freeman School of Business, Public Health, and Architecture) that serve undergraduates.
The B-School offers joint programs, the most popular being the Bachelor of Science in Management (BSM) and the Master of Accounting Program (MACCT) which they can complete in five years, with the option in spring of the senior year to complete a “busy season internship.”
This flexible, interdisciplinary approach is the core of the Freeman education. Many other B-Schools have barriers with admissions or prerequisite requirements that make it difficult for students to cross academic boundaries but at Freeman, students are given more freedom and flexibility.
NUMEROUS REAL-WORLD OPPORTUNITIES
There isn’t just one cornerstone experience at Freeman. Alumni we surveyed reported a variety of hands-on, real-world opportunities that they say were key to their business education. Roughly 85.07% of surveyed alumni reported that their first career after graduating was in their desired industry.
One example is the Burkenroad Reports program where each year, 200 Freeman students are divided up into teams to follow companies. Teams meet with top management, visit company sites, design financial models, and publish in-depth, unbiased investment research reports. The companies researched are “stocks under rocks” – companies. In the spring, top management of participating companies present the outlook for their companies and industries to an audience of nearly 800 individual and institutional investors.
“Burkenroad gave me the opportunity to understand equity research on a real-world analyst level, including meeting with C-level executives of the companies we were tasked with researching,” one alumni told us.
But the Burkenroad Reports program is just one of many real-world opportunities at Freeman. Alumni we surveyed highlighted the plethora of opportunities they had to apply their studies to the real world.
“I had a real-world consulting client for my management consulting class senior year (a local restaurant) and was able to make changes to a real business and see the impacts instead of simply reading case studies,” another alumni told us.
At Freeman, students are given an open runway to go out and explore their passions and interests. If a student is interested in chemical engineering and business, he or she can pursue that. If a student wants to start taking business classes in the first year, the student can do so freely. With a flexible, interdisciplinary-focused education and plenty of opportunities to learn in the real world, Freeman students can truly explore and pursue everything and anything.
Alumni say:
“The experience gained from different projects and experiential learning was invaluable as we learned in some cases whole course loads with one project. You are also working with high level people who have knowledge and resources that I can only Imagine are very rare at a majority of institutions.”
“The Aaron Selber Jr. course on Distressed Debt investing was pivotal in preparing me for investment analysis. The case studies, research, public presentation, & meeting with industry professionals undoubtedly contributed to my confidence once in the working world.”
“Altman Program for International Studies and Business brought a humanities lens to business school studies, which should be essential for any business student.”
“Amazing resources, I am grateful for the full scholarship given to me by Tulane University to benefit from them.”
“The professors at Tulane for the most part really want to help their students and will take the extra time to meet with students to go over either work or personal/career matters.”
