The school is small, with only 122 full-time students - but the recognition is large.

The Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Davis, cracked the threshold of the top 30 business schools in the nation for the first time, tying for 29th in the closely watched U.S. News & World Report survey released today.

Davis tied with business schools at Arizona State University, Michigan State University and the University of Notre Dame on the top-50 list.

"For a small school, that's an amazing accomplishment," said Michael Ziegler, the top executive at Pride Industries in Roseville and a member of the business advisory council to Nicole Woolsey Biggart, who became UC Davis' business school dean in July.

The magazine based its rankings on a range of criteria, including grade point averages of accepted applicants, the relative number of students accepted, success in placing graduates, and assessments of schools by business school deans and corporate recruiters.

Corporate recruiters gave Davis an average rating of 3.5 out of a possible 5, while its peers put it at 3.1. The university accepted 31 percent of applicants, and 69 percent of graduates had a job when they received their sheepskins. That number rose to 84 percent three months later.

Two California business schools scored among the top 10: Stanford Graduate School of Business, with more than 700 graduate business students, captured second behind Harvard Business School. UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, with 480 students, ranked eighth.

"We're using the campus as a treasure trove of possibilities to give students educational opportunities and, at the same time, they are helping campus researchers and the business community to develop startups," Biggart said. "It's a wonderful situation."

Larry Welch, vice president of procurement for Hewlett-Packard Co. in Roseville and another member of the dean's advisory council, called the Davis showing "a pure academic recognition that it's a top-flight school and getting better each year."

The Davis Graduate School, barely 75 miles from Berkeley, is the smallest of the three full-time Northern California schools on the list. Davis also has 250 part-time graduate business students not included in the comparison.

Davis climbs the ladder
The Graduate School of Management, University of California, Davis

Dean: Nicole Woolsey Biggart

Budget: $8 million

Faculty/staff: 28/30

Enrollment (full-time): 122

Principal degree: Master's of business administration

Ranking: U.S. News & World Report ranks the nation's top business schools, and this year UC Davis moved up to 29 from 35. A look at how some universities fared:

1. Harvard University

2. Stanford University

3. University of Pennsylvania

4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

5. Northwestern University

6. Columbia University

6. University of Chicago

8. University of California, Berkeley

9. Dartmouth College

10. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

12. University of California, Los Angeles

18. University of Southern California

29. University of California, Davis