Wharton reclaims top business school title in U.S. News' latest rankings

Students on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania.
Thom Carroll/PhillyVoice

One year after dropping from top dog to bronze medalist, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business was named the best graduate business school in the country in U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings.

U.S. News touted the school’s post-graduation employment rate — 83.6 percent of full-time program graduates are employed — and “the largest alumni network in the country” as two of the key reasons it ranked the University City institution ahead of its peers.

President Donald Trump is one of those Wharton alumni, though he graduated from the school’s undergraduate program, not its graduate program. Trump received a degree in finance and graduated in 1968.

Last year’s full-time enrollment at Wharton, the ranking says, was comprised of 1,742 students, 56.3 percent of whom (or roughly 981) were male and 43.7 percent of whom (or roughly 761) were female.

According to U.S. News, another Wharton perk is the ability to reel in a sizable salary after graduation: the average base salary of Wharton employees is $139,670.

Of course, the full-time program costs $72,300 per year, so that base salary for graduates doesn’t cover the full cost of two years studying at Wharton.

Just last month, Penn announced its cost of undergraduate attendance will rise to $73,960 for the 2019-2020 academic year, a nearly four percent increase from 2018-19, when the school eclipsed the $70,000 mark for the first time in its first 277 years of existence.


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