The University of Dayton held strong and secured their place at No. 54 in both this year’s 2023 rankings and last year’s 2022 rankings. As far as the three methodological categories go, the school ranked best in Academic Experience at No. 34, then came in at No. 43 in Career Outcomes and No. 70 in Admissions.
Dayton’s incoming batch of students had an acceptance rate of 65% – much more selective than last year’s incoming class’s rate of 76%. The average SAT score for the incoming class was 1267 – up a good 27 points from last year’s score of 1240.
This year, career stats dropped a bit from the already impressive rate of 99% for the Class of 2022 securing a full time position 3 months after graduation to a still impressive 94.62% for the Class of 2023. Internship rates rose a bit from 91% for the Class of 2022 to 92% for the Class of 2023 completing at least one business-focused internship prior to graduation.
HOME OF THE INCREDIBLE FLYER FUND
Dayton is perhaps most famous for its Flyer Fund, the largest student-managed portfolio in the United States. First launched in 1999 as a small, $1 million fund, by 2010 the Flyer Fund was worth more than $11 million. By 2015, the fund was valued at $22 million, with a portion coming from the university’s endowment and a pool of assets for the Dayton Foundation, a local nonprofit.
The fund really took off in 2021, gaining 63% in a single year to more than $50 million. Through fall 2021, the fund gained another 13.8% to reach a high of $67.8 million.
“It’s a pretty unbelievable group,” says Dayton School of Business Administration Dean Trevor Collier of the dozens of students who work in the Davis Center each year. “Not only are they putting the hours in the Center, but they actually enjoy most of the hours that they’re putting in. If you were in the building right now and we were to walk down into the Center, at least one, maybe two students would jump up, introduce themselves to you, and give you about a two-minute elevator pitch about the center.”
Alumni Say:
“Our project team of four seniors worked with an international firm’s sourcing and procurement department to assess their current vendor selection process and develop a database to track vendor information. Some challenges we overcame included understanding the complexity of their process, factoring all KPIs into the new system and avoiding data redundancy, and working within a virtual environment. By the close of the project, the client implemented our developed vendor management database/process as part of their business processes. Named the ‘Project of the Year.’”
“Several project experiences provided me with hands-on, real life examples of the business world. Not only did I learn the typical areas of business, but also had the opportunity to learn the future of business by taking classes as part of the EY Day One Ready Program on areas such as robotics and lean six sigma.”
“Hanley Sustainability Fund. 100% student-run ESG fund, outperformed S&P500. Stock valuation, buy/sell pitches, voting, research, and non-discretionary branch based on technical indicators. Learned more about business from the Hanley Fund than any class. Also outperformed Dayton’s other student-run portfolio, the Davis Center for Portfolio Management, which has greater assets under management but was usually outperformed by Hanley.”
“As a double-major in Business Economics & Mathematics, the senior capstone for Business Economics involved directly applying learned econometric techniques to producing novel undergraduate research. This capstone experience was arguably one of the most important experiences in my time at UD as it opened the floodgates of understanding applied work and stimulated a deep passion for my present work in data science & machine learning.”
“The Davis Center for Portfolio Management. It gave me real experience and real points to talk about in my interviews. It showed I was competent and was trusted by the university to handle their endowment money. It was a great experience and I’d recommend it to anyone coming to the business school, not just finance majors.”
