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