By Brielle Bryan
News Editor
The College’s School of Business was ranked No. 44 in Wharton Tops Poets&Quants’ Best Undergraduate Business Programs of 2017 on Dec. 5.
Poets&Quants, the leading online publication for undergraduate business education news, configures its rankings by asking 2015 graduates to rate their schools based on 15 various open-ended questions, according to the College’s website.
A main concern students have when applying to colleges is whether they will receive the education and resources they need to build their careers and have a job when they graduate.
Alumni of the School of Business have found that their time at the College was very well spent.
Alumnus Brian Dragotto (’16), founder of the College’s Entrepreneurship Club, felt that the College’s School of Business provided him a well rounded education.
“It’s so important for students to get involved and be a part of those networks, develop those relationships and learn from some of the nation’s top-rated business professors,” Dragotto said.
Herbert B. Mayo, professor of finance, and Kevin Michels, professor of marketing & interdisciplinary business, made Poets&Quants’ Top 40 Undergraduate Business Professors list, according to the School of Business website.
The College’s School of Business offers a variety of clubs for students to build their networks and enhance their learning experiences, such as the Entrepreneurship Club, Women in Business and the American Marketing Association.
About 60 percent of the students who receive a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration at the College receive one or more job offers before they even graduate, according to the School of Business’s website.
“At a time when parents and students are confronting ever increasing tuition bills and levels of debt, the return on investment of a degree is more important than ever,” Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Poets&Quants for Undergraduates John A. Byrne said.
Joe Salamone, a 2017 alumnus and former president of the Entrepreneurship Club, completed his degree in interdisciplinary business. Salamone currently works at PKA Technologies, an exclusive partner of Hewlett-Packard, and was offered the job a month before his graduation.
“There is a learning curve with this new job but my major prepared me well for learning new subjects quickly,” Salamone said.
Dragotto is currently a financial advisor and managing associate at International Planning Alliance, but began his career at Merrill Lynch. He also received a job offer about a month before graduation.
Almost 80 percent of business students at the College complete at least one internship or co-op before graduation, according to the School of Business website.
During Dragotto’s sophomore year, he had a finance co-op at Johnson & Johnson.
“Instead of being surrounded by my peers, I found myself surrounded by people who knew more than me and had a better work ethic than me,” Dragotto said. “They gave me the chance to learn, fail and grow alongside of them, which is hard to do in a classroom setting.”
Salamone felt that in many ways the School of Business set him up for success, but if he could change one thing about the program, it would be to incorporate more Microsoft programs into the course curriculum.
“TCNJ, in general, is very pro-Google,” Salamone said. “At my new job, I have had to relearn how to use Outlook, Word, Excel and Sharepoint instead of Google’s gmail, docs and sheets, just to name a few. It was a transition.”
Aside from Poets&Quants, the School of Business was ranked highly by other publications as well.
The College ranked No. 57 in Best Colleges for Accounting and Finance in America for 2018, according to Niche.com.
In 2016, the College ranked No. 35 in Bloomberg’s Best Undergraduate Business Schools, up 28 spots from being ranked No. 63 in 2015.
“TCNJ’s School of Business has consistently placed among the top undergraduate programs in the country,” said William W. Keep, dean of the School of Business.
While it was a major achievement for the School of Business to make the list of top 50 undergraduate schools, if the program continues to maintain its focus on preparing students for a life after college, it may very well move further up in the ranks.
