Kelley’s rankings improve

IU’s Kelley School of Business moved up one place to 19th in Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine’s most recent rankings of undergraduate business programs around the nation.

Kelley School Dean Dan Smith said he thinks the main reason for the rise is higher SAT scores of incoming students, a factor BusinessWeek weighs heavily, he said.

The increase in scores was no accident.

Smith said the business school has been actively placing more emphasis on recruiting students with the highest scores from the nation’s top schools.

“Over the past three to four years we have needed to increase our SAT scores to be competitive with the top business schools, many of which are private and are able to secure considerably higher scoring students,” Smith said.

After evaluation, Kelley maintained its “A” grade for its career services operations and also received an “A” grade for teaching quality, according to an IU press release.

Smith said a goal of the Kelley School was to remain in the top 20 in the future. Since BusinessWeek has conducted these rankings, Kelley has been placed in the top 20. This year’s rankings were announced on March 4.

“It matters to a lot of parents and prospective students when they are making tough decisions,” Smith said.

He said higher rankings lead to more competitive applications.

“We still admit the same amount of students,” Smith said. “The difference is that we’re seeing a lot more applications from stronger candidates.”

Smith remains confident that IU’s Kelley School is worthy of the ranking, placing second among Big Ten schools and seventh among business programs at public universities, according to the release.

“The greatest strength is our collaborative culture,” Smith said. “Students and faculty work together for a common goal, to produce the best young professionals that we can possibly produce.”

He said when that goal is accomplished, rankings tend to take care of themselves.