Ranked #1 in Internships, 25th in Overall Academic Quality;
Students Give School A+ on Job Placement for Second Consecutive Year

Contact: Laura Shea at 617-373-5427

(3-15-07) BOSTON, Mass. – Northeastern University’s College of Business Administration announced that its undergraduate business school is ranked 26th in the U.S. in BusinessWeek’s second annual ranking of the top 50 best undergraduate business schools. It was also ranked No. 1 in the Internship category and 8th among private colleges for return on students’ investment (ROI). Students gave the College of Business Administration an A+ rating for job placement citing the tremendous value of its cooperative education (co-op) program.

Northeastern moved up 11 places from its ranking last year. “Northeastern’s College of Business Administration improved its ranking on several measures,” said Louis Lavelle, B-school editor for BusinessWeek. “Also, students there are now earning about $50,000 a year, up from $45,000 in 2006.”

“What does it take to be a leading business school? Great students, great faculty and great programs. We have all three,” said Thomas E. Moore, dean of the College of Business Administration. “It’s our unique blend of classroom and co-op that makes the difference,” Moore commented. Among colleges in Massachusetts, only MIT and Boston College were ranked higher.

“Graduates of our Bachelor of Science in International Business (BSIB) program have been sought after by both global companies headquartered abroad as well as U.S.-based companies with international offices. In the last several years alone, foreign-based companies, including BMW, Daimler-Benz, Gucci, L’Oréal and Versace have all hired BSIB graduates to work abroad. At the same time, BSIB graduates have garnered jobs at international offices of U.S. multinational corporations, including Bain & Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb, JPMorgan, Liberty Mutual, PFC Energy and Raytheon,” remarked Peggy Fletcher, associate dean of undergraduate business programs.

In both the BSIB and the College’s Bachelor of Science in Business Administration programs, the combination of academic study and work produces an overall learning experience that gives greater meaning to academic studies and greater direction to career development.

Reinforcing the College’s reputation as a school that delivers a “real-world” business education through close partnerships with the business community, Moore credits the College’s co-op employers with “providing high quality positions that challenge our students, helping them to develop and mature professionally.”

To succeed in the BusinessWeek undergraduate business school ranking, which incorporates five measures of student engagement, post-graduation outcomes and academic quality, schools must be firing on all cylinders. Small classes, talented faculty, top-flight recruiting and a format that allows ultra-competitive students to delve deeply into business fundamentals were common denominators of the best schools.

In ranking the best business programs in the United States, BusinessWeek teamed up with Boston’s Cambria Consulting and identified 93 colleges that met stringent quality criteria, and then surveyed about 77,000 graduating seniors from 123 undergraduate programs, asking them to rate their programs on everything from curriculum and faculty to facilities and grading policies. To find out how students fared after graduation, the team surveyed 466 corporate recruiters and studied starting salaries and conducted a third survey of the business programs themselves. BusinessWeek also tapped into its storehouse of data to determine which schools send the most students to top MBA programs. BusinessWeek’s complete rankings of the Top 50 Undergraduate Business Schools is available in the March 19, 2007 issue of BusinessWeek and on BusinessWeek Online at http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/07/undergrad.

About Northeastern University’s College of Business Administration: Northeastern University’s College of Business Administration, established in 1922, provides its students – undergraduate, graduate and executive – with the education, tools and experience necessary to launch and accelerate successful business careers. The College credits its success to expert faculty, close partnerships with industry, and its emphasis on rigorous academics combined with experiential learning. Among many external measures of success, BusinessWeek ranks the College 26th in its “Best Undergraduate B-schools”. The College’s Bachelor of Science in International Business program is ranked in the U.S. top 15 by U.S. News & World Report. Financial Times ranks the College’s Executive MBA program as one of the best in the world and U.S. News & World Report ranks the College’s part-time MBA program #20 in the country. For more information about Northeastern University College of Business Administration, visit http://cba.neu.edu.

For more information, contact:

Dennis O’Connor
Paradigm Communications (for Northeastern University CBA)
508-650-0100; Cell: (781) 883-5109
dennis.oconnor@paradigmshiftpr.com

About Northeastern: Founded in 1898, Northeastern University is a private research university located in the heart of Boston. Northeastern is a leader in interdisciplinary research, urban engagement, and the integration of classroom learning with real-world experience. The university’s distinctive cooperative education program, where students alternate semesters of full-time study with semesters of paid work in fields relevant to their professional interests and major, is one of the largest and most innovative in the world. The University offers a comprehensive range of undergraduate and graduate programs leading to degrees through the doctorate in six undergraduate colleges, eight graduate schools, and two part-time divisions. For more information, please visit www.northeastern.edu.