The UA Eller College of Management’s full-time MBA program is now ranked in the top 50 in the nation.

The program rose from 57th to 44th in the 2014 graduate rankings complied by U.S. News and World Report. The 13-slot climb makes Eller the program with the greatest increase in the top 50 this year, ratifying the title of “MBA Program on the Rise” it was awarded last year.

“We’ve worked really hard to make that change, so it’s great to see that success from all of our hard work,” said Jennifer Bublitz, assistant dean of the Eller MBA program. “We took a look at what they were looking at in the rankings to really understand what could we influence.”

When ranking the nation’s full-time MBA programs, U.S. News and World Report considers peer and recruiter reputation, average GMAT scores, average starting salary, percentage of students employed upon graduation and many smaller factors, according to the website.

“The big changes we made were in the quality of the students we enrolled in our program, specifically measured by the GMAT,” Bublitz said. ”By attracting and enrolling higher quality students, we provide a better experience for all of our students in the classroom.”

Last year the MBA program recruited the strongest incoming class in several years, based on GMAT scores and work experience, and the program promises to keep improving its national ranking by providing students with access to the best jobs on the market through contacts, job postings and networking, Bublitz said.

“I expect that the incoming class for next year will be even stronger than ours was this year because as the rankings improve, stronger students are going to be drawn to this program, which is just going to further strengthen the national ranking of the Eller MBA,” said Carly Gordon, a first-
year graduate student in the MBA program.

The increase in the MBA program’s ranking not only caught the attention of graduate students in Eller, but also sparked interest from undergraduates in the Eller College of Management.

“The ranking definitely influences my decision,” said Dean Avrahami, a sophomore in the Eller undergraduate program, when discussing his plans to apply for an MBA program. “It would definitely influence me because I know that Eller is an amazing school and worldwide, it’s a great
business school.”

The full-time MBA program was not the only Eller graduate program to be nationally ranked. The evening MBA program ranked 46th overall and Eller’s strongest programs, the Department of Management Information Systems and the McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship, ranked 4th and 11th overall, respectively.

Bublitz and Hope Schau, associate dean of the Eller MBA programs, said they hope to continue this upward trend in the national rankings far into the future by setting a high standard of excellence and quality of experience in their programs.

“Hope [Shau] has a vision to deliver an excellent experience to our students and to continue to increase the quality of our incoming classes,” Bublitz said. “We need to just communicate the experience that we offer to a larger number of people so that they know about the number of great programs we have here.”