Most Entrepreneurial Schools In U.S.

Babson College

Like Stanford, the University of California-Berkeley has developed a strong back-and-forth synergy with nearby Silicon Valley. The school boasts alumni who’ve created notable brands like Yardbarker, MySpace, LegalZoom, PowerBar, and Google Earth. And they did it with degrees in architecture, electrical engineering, computer science, and critical film studies. In 2012, the business school launched the Skydeck Startup Accelerator, where companies founded in various Berkeley labs receive space, mentoring, and access to university resources and partnerships to foster their growth.

Rounding out the top five are Cornell University and UCLA. Cornell, whose entrepreneurial bent is spurred by the cross-disciplinary nature of its curriculum, recently committed $50 million dollars to its Innovation Challenge, which includes funding for the school’s applied sciences and technology campus in New York City.

Forbes’ startup school ranking – which could be dismissed as a glorified Linkedin search – does contradict several established entrepreneurship rankings. For example, a joint ranking from The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine of the best graduate programs in entrepreneurship ranks the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business at #1, as opposed to #40 in Forbes (which combines both undergraduate and graduate programs). While the Princeton Review ranking, which is based on a confidential 60 question survey, is as opaque as Forbes’ Linkedin data, there are too many discrepancies to ignore. For example, Babson College, universally regarded among the top schools for entrepreneurship is unranked in Forbes, yet is #2 on the Princeton Review list. In fact, many of the top-ranked entrepreneurship programs listed on the Princeton Review ranking aren’t found on Forbes, including the University of Virginia (#5), the University of North Carolina (#9), and the University of Chicago (#11), and the University of Arizona (#14). And Rice University, which is the #4 entrepreneurial graduate program according to The Princeton Review, only notches the #50 spot in Forbes.

Here’s something even more glaring: Harvard is ranked #3 by The Princeton Review, yet only #34 by Forbes. In an exclusive Poets and Quants study, which ranked the top 100 startups from graduate business programs, Harvard produced 34 of the top 100, with those ventures generating nearly $576 million in venture funding. Ironically, Stanford and MIT – which ranked #1 and #2 on Forbes’ list, ranked #2 and #3 on Poets and Quants’ list, with Stanford alums launching 32 top 100 companies to the tune of nearly $981 million dollars in funding (MIT grads started 11 of those 100 companies with over $189 million invested in them).

And Forbes’ results don’t just fly in the face of graduate business school rankings. Let’s look at the U.S. News and World Report undergraduate business school rankings, which are based on surveys completed by school deans and senior faculty. Here, Babson College – which isn’t even listed by Forbes – is ranked #1 (and has been #1 for 17 straight years). The University of Southern California, ranked #22 by Forbes, is the runner-up to USC. The University of Indiana, the University of Arizona, the University of North Carolina, and Syracuse University – all top 10 undergraduate programs for entrepreneurship according to U.S. News – aren’t even ranked by Forbes.

At best, this means the other disciplines aren’t producing many entrepreneurs in these schools. At worst, it means Forbes should cross-reference another data point besides Linkedin percentages to measure overall entrepreneurship.

To review Forbes’ top 50 startup schools, check out the next two pages.