The C.T. Bauer College of Business at University of Houston finished No. 52 on Poets&Quants’ 2026 ranking of the Best Undergraduate Business Programs in the U.S. In our three methodological categories, it finished No. 45 in Admission Standards, No. 75 in Career Outcomes, and No. 55 in Academic Experience (based solely on our alumni survey).
The B-school’s acceptance rate for the fall 2025 incoming class was 41.9%, and the class also reported an average SAT score of 1296. Its six-year graduation rate is 82.7%.
In career data, 65.1% of Class of 2025 graduates and 70.2% of Class of 2024 grads completed at least one business-specific internship before graduation. Some 90.9% of 2025 grads found jobs within three months, compared to 84.1% of 2024 grads.
Average salary for the most recent graduates was $70,162, with 17.2% of them reporting an average signing bonus of $6,531. The top employers for the Class of 2025 included Amazon, EY, Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle, CBRE, Forvis Mazars, and JPMorgan Chase.
REAL EXPERIENCE IN SPECIALTY PROGRAMS
Bauer offers seven majors — Accounting, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Management, Management Information Systems, Marketing, and Supply Chain Management — and the college says students can also choose from 11 minors. But perhaps what makes the Bauer education most attractive is the abundance of specialty programs that students can choose from. Bauer’s specialty programs allow students to dig deeper into their field of interest and feature opportunities to gain real work experience.
For instance, the A.R. “Tony” and Maria J. Sanchez Program for Excellence in Selling requires students in every program class to engage in live selling, with sales quota performance built into the grade.
Bauer College prides itself on delivering business education for the real world, leveraging Houston’s position as a major business hub to provide students with rich internship opportunities, industry-connected faculty, and research-based experiential learning. The Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship remains a signature offering, Bauer continues to promote energy-focused pathways across several disciplines, and its Internal Audit Certificate is recognized by the Institute of Internal Auditors as a Center of Excellence. Bauer also supports undergraduate global learning through its Office of Global Initiatives and learning-abroad offerings, while the Office of Experiential Learning helps connect academic work with internships, case competitions, and co-curricular projects.
The college also continues to emphasize diversity and access. In Bauer’s 2025 submitted profile materials, the school reported No. 1-in-Texas standings for total minority degrees awarded in business administration, finance, and marketing, along with a No. 1 national standing for total minority degrees awarded in management information systems.
RECENT INNOVATIONS
Bauer’s fully online BBA now spans seven business-focused majors and is taught by the same faculty as the in-person program, with advising, academic support, leadership programs, and career services built in.
The school has also launched Bauer House First-Year and Bauer House 2+ Years living-learning communities. First-year students share a section of BUSI 1301, while the upper-division community is designed to support students as they move into advanced coursework, internships, leadership roles, and career preparation.
In addition, Bauer says its honors program has expanded learning-away and professional development opportunities, while its global and experiential-learning offices continue to broaden the ways students can connect classroom work with real-world and international experience.
OPPORTUNITIES TO CONNECT
Connections are key to business. And at Bauer, students can gain strong experience through connecting with faculty and business professionals in different settings such as case competitions. The college also highlights more than 30 undergraduate student organizations, giving students additional ways to work on projects, build internships, serve the community, and compete regionally and nationally.
“I participated in 8 different case competitions and won awards, which helped me to apply the academic knowledge to real life case scenarios and gave me the opportunity to be in front of professionals and got coaching sessions from them,” said an alum.
Another alumni told us that the connections made within the classroom led to career opportunities beyond the classroom.
“I participated in a sourcing case competition that was a part of the class curriculum. It helped me gain the skills necessary to get my foot in the door in the industry I was seeking, and helped me connect to employers, and in the end, helped me get a job.”
Bauer also reported that 100% of its Class of 2025 participated in a consulting project with an external organization, underscoring how central applied learning is to the undergraduate experience.
With strong specialty programs and connections that lead to future internship and employment opportunities, Bauer students are well-prepared for any career they choose to pursue.
ALUMNI SAY
“I was involved in a project in collaboration with 3M at the beginning of the pandemic to help small business and non-profit organizations find alternative ways to keep business running smoothly in the midst of the unknown at the time. It helped me realize that working with non-profit marketing was the path I wanted to take for my career.”
“I was part of the capstone project and have found that was the best introduction to supply chain you can get. Being put into a random group and analyzing spread sheet data is exactly what I do in my day to day as well as create strategies and solutions on how to improve based on the data we analyzed.”
“Excellent college experience and excellent job placement.”
“There were lots of professional professors at Bauer College. They were not only concerned about students’ studies but also any life problems when I communicated with them.”
“I think that the teachers really care about the students learning as well as what they specialize in which was different compared to core classes or other students experiences with different majors/schools.”
