The undergraduate program at the Lally School of Management and Technology has been ranked 26th in the nation in the 2008 rankings published by Businessweek. Additionally, the Lally School finished as No. 1 in the nation in the magazine’s specialty ranking for corporate strategy.
After being unranked two years ago, the Lally School finished at No. 40 last year before jumping 14 places in the rankings to land at No. 26 this year.
The Lally School also finished 18th in return on investment (measured as the ratio of starting salary to annual tuition) and in the top five undergraduate business programs located in the northeastern United States.
Improvement was seen in almost every measure contributing to the rankings, including a recruiter survey rank of 22 (83 in ’07), a student survey rank of 27 (32 in ’07), an A+ facilities and services grade (B in ’07), and an academic quality rank of 25 (31 in ’07).
Director of the Undergraduate Program Frank Wright attributed this success to execution: “Our curriculum necessarily hasn’t changed significantly in the last decade. What has happened is our execution of the curriculum has improved.”
Wright explained further that “if you take a look at what the students wrote … as the overarching benefit of going to school here it was the one-on-one service from the faculty, and I believe that wholeheartedly has been an effort of this new dean,” referring to Dean of the Lally School David Gautschi, who was named as the school’s dean in 2005.
Perhaps the most impressive ranking received was in the specialty category of corporate strategy, where the Lally School earned the No. 1 rank.
This ranking is largely based on the capstone course of the undergraduate program: Strategy and Policy. The course had been taught by associate professor Andrew Corbett.
Strategy and Policy is a hands-on course, and includes a competition-style project where students work in teams to run companies. Francisco Salcie ’07 explained, “We had to plan out everything for a company, from how we wanted our products to change, to how many we were going to sell, all the way down to managing turnover and employee training.”
When students were contacted about their experiences and opinions of the course, they had only good things to say.
Trent Gillaspie ’08 said: “When I heard about the No. 1 ranking, I immediately thought of this course and how it deserves to be recognized for such an achievement and its great qualities that make it such a valuable resource.”
Other specialty rankings for the Lally School included No. 5 in calculus and No. 8 in both quantitative methods and operations management.
