Cracking the Books
It still only takes about two hours of studying a day to get through a Top 50 business program, but at some schools that’s starting to change.
As a barometer of student engagement, few measures are better than the number of hours students spend on class work each week. At our top 50 schools, the number hovers around 14, but a number of schools are significantly higher. Overall, time spent hitting the books decreased slightly since last year—by about 12 minutes per week—in part due to big declines at some of the highest-ranked schools, including Washington University, Brigham Young, and Wharton. For one school, though, extra hard work paid off. Wake Forest overtook Michigan for the title of the hardest working undergraduate b-school program in the nation.
| Hardest Working Rank | Overall BW rank | School | Hours per week on classwork | Change from last year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 21 | Wake Forest (Calloway) Winston-Salem, N.C. |
23.5 | 3.0 |
| 2 | 6 | Michigan (Ross) Ann Arbor |
22.2 | 1.2 |
| 3 | 28 | Babson Babson Park, Mass. |
19.0 | 1.7 |
| 4 | 48 | Minnesota (Carlson) Minneapolis |
18.2 | 2.5 |
| 5 | 37 | Wisconsin (Madison) |
17.6 | 0.1 |
| 6 | 9 | MIT (Sloan) Cambridge, Mass. |
17.4 | 2.3 |
| 7 | 20 | Richmond (Robins) Richmond, Va. |
17.0 | -1.7 |
| 8 | 1 | Pennsylvania (Wharton) Philadelphia |
16.4 | -2.4 |
| 9 | 12 | North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler) Chapel Hill |
16.4 | 0.1 |
| 10 | 32 | Texas Christian (Neeley) Fort Worth |
16.1 | 2.5 |
| 11 | 24 | Miami U. (Farmer) Oxford, Ohio |
15.7 | NC |
| 12 | 4 | Cornell Ithaca, N.Y. |
15.7 | 1.8 |
| 13 | 25 | Lehigh Bethlehem, Pa. |
15.6 | 0.2 |
| 14 | 2 | Virginia (McIntire) Charlottesville |
15.5 | -1.0 |
| 15 | 36 | Baylor (Hankamer) Waco, Tex. |
15.5 | 1.0 |
| 16 | 7 | Brigham Young (Marriott) Provo, Utah |
15.4 | -3.2 |
| 17 | 8 | NYU (Stern) New York |
15.3 | -0.6 |
| 18 | 33 | U. of Washington Seattle |
15.3 | -0.3 |
| 19 | 42 | Boston U. Boston |
15.2 | -1.0 |
| 20 | 22 | Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) Pittsburgh |
14.9 | -1.7 |
| 21 | 3 | Notre Dame (Mendoza) South Bend, Ind. |
14.8 | -0.6 |
| 22 | 18 | Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
14.8 | NC |
| 23 | 10 | Texas (McCombs) Austin |
14.7 | 0.1 |
| 24 | 29 | William & Mary (Mason) Williamsburg, Va. |
14.5 | -0.6 |
| 25 | 31 | Texas A & M (Mays) College Station |
14.5 | 1.1 |
| 26 | 41 | Case Western (Weatherhead) Cleveland, Ohio |
14.3 | NA |
| 27 | 16 | Indiana (Kelley) Bloomington |
14.3 | 0.4 |
| 28 | 5 | Emory (Goizueta) Atlanta |
14.1 | -0.3 |
| 29 | 13 | Villanova Villanova, Pa. |
14.0 | 0.4 |
| 30 | 11 | UC-Berkeley (Haas) Berkeley, Calif. |
14.0 | 1.0 |
| 31 | 14 | Boston College (Carroll) Boston |
13.5 | -0.5 |
| 32 | 23 | SMU (Cox) Dallas |
13.4 | 0.8 |
| 33 | 45 | Loyola College (Sellinger) Baltimore |
13.3 | NA |
| 34 | 39 | Michigan State (Broad) East Lansing |
13.1 | -0.4 |
| 35 | 34 | Northeastern Boston |
13.0 | -0.3 |
| 36 | 19 | Georgetown (McDonough) Washington, D.C. |
12.8 | -1.9 |
| 37 | 17 | USC (Marshall) Los Angeles |
12.6 | -1.9 |
| 38 | 35 | Santa Clara Santa Clara, Calif. |
12.6 | -0.5 |
| 39 | 47 | U. San Diego San Diego, Calif. |
12.4 | -0.2 |
| 40 | 30 | Bentley Waltham, Mass. |
12.3 | 0.1 |
| 41 | 46 | Florida (Warrington) Gainesville |
12.1 | 1.3 |
| 42 | 50 | Rutgers New Brunswick, N.J. |
11.9 | -0.5 |
| 43 | 40 | Binghamton Binghamton, N.Y. |
11.8 | NA |
| 44 | 26 | Rensselaer Polytech (Lally) Troy, N.Y. |
11.7 | 0.9 |
| 45 | 43 | Maryland (Smith) College Park |
11.0 | -0.4 |
| 46 | 15 | Washington U. (Olin) St. Louis |
10.9 | -2.1 |
| 47 | 49 | U. of Miami Coral Gables, Fla. |
10.4 | 0.6 |
| 48 | 38 | Penn State (Smeal) University Park |
10.2 | -1.4 |
| 49 | 44 | Georgia (Terry) Athens |
9.8 | NA |
| 50 | 27 | Fordham New York |
8.5 | -0.7 |
| TOP 50 AVERAGE | 14.4 | -0.2 |