Three Virginia biz schools rank in top 25 of Poets&Quants’ 2026 list

Six Virginia business schools placed among the the top 110 business schools in Poets&Quants’ 2026 rankings of undergraduate business schools released Monday. Of these Virginia schools, three were in the top 25.

Poets&Quants for Undergrads, an online publication and forum focused on business schools, ranks institutions across three categories: admissions standards, academic experience and career outcomes. The final ranking is determined by combining the index scores from each category to produce an overall final raw score.

For the eighth time in the past 10 years, the No. 1 school nationally was the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

The University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce ranked second overall, rising two spots from last year. The program also placed first in academic experience and second in admission standards.

“Being ranked No. 2 nationally and recognized as the top U.S. public undergraduate business program is deeply gratifying,” interim Dean Amanda Cowen said in a statement. “We are especially proud of our No. 1 ranking in academic experience — a holistic assessment that considers everything from teaching quality and faculty accessibility to experiential learning, mentorship and alumni engagement.”

At No. 17 overall, the University of Richmond’s Robins School of Business was Virginia’s second highest-ranked program, holding steady from last year. This is the fifth consecutive year Robins has been among the top 20 schools.

“I am delighted that this year’s rankings recognize Robins’ commitment to providing a challenging, career-focused education with real-world impact,” Mickey Quiñones, dean of the business school, said in a statement. “At Robins, we are preparing students to think broadly, act boldly and graduate as human-centered, globally minded and technology-enabled leaders ready to make a difference in the world.”

The third highest-ranking business school in Virginia was was William & Mary‘s Raymond A. Mason School of Business, ranked 24th overall — down from 20th last year.

The fourth place Virginia school was the Christopher Newport University Luter School of Business at No. 76. CNU didn’t place on the overall list last year.

The fifth highest-ranking Virginia school was Longwood University at No. 88. And lastly, the University of Mary Washington came in 92nd place overall, down eight spots from last year.

According to Poets&Quants, admissions standards data was collected directly from schools through an institutional survey, administered between October 2025 and January 2026.

Metrics in the publication’s admissions category include acceptance rate of the incoming class, six-year graduation rate, average SAT/ACT scores, average high school GPA and the percent of the incoming class that are female, international, underrepresented minorities and first-generation college students. It removed a metric measuring the percentage of incoming students who were in the top 10% of their high school classes.

The academic experience data comes from an alumni survey conducted between October 2025 and January 2026. This year’s publication surveyed students from the class of 2023 (students graduating between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023) from every school that the publication ranked. Surveys were sent to 53,272 alumni from all 110 of the ranked business programs, and Poets&Quants got 6,061 responses.

Poets&Quants used an average of two years of career data for the class of 2024 and class of 2025 to obtain metrics related to career outcomes. Those measurements included the percent of job-seeking students who secured full-time employment within 90 days of graduation, the average total first-year compensation and the percent of students who had business-focused internships before their senior year.