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Ready to get an advanced degree? Curious what an MBA or Ph.D. program in entrepreneurship looks like? Get a look at the innovative programs, spaces, centers and fellowships open to students getting advanced degrees in entrepreneurship at the schools that made it into the top 10.

The goal at Syracuse is to ensure students graduate with practical experience. Writing business plans, conducting feasibility studies, mapping out marketing strategies and seeing how all these translate to real-life businesses is par for the course. Says department chair Michael Morris, “When a student finishes our program, they’re expected to put together a portfolio of entrepreneurial achievements . . . and all of these are tangible deliverables that students produce as part of courses for real firms.” Syracuse also has a variety of local and international outreach programs, offering student teams the opportunity to work as consultants to inner-city businesses or travel abroad to help entrepreneurs in developing nations.

Want to unleash your creativity? DePaul entrepreneurship students have access to the Ryan Center for Creativity and Innovation, which helps students generate ideas for their businesses and teaches creative problem solving. The center brings in authors, researchers and experts who’ve worked with all kinds of companies to speak on innovation, creativity, collaboration and motivation. “Creativity in Business” is even a required course for the entrepreneurship major.

One thing that sets Northwestern’s entrepreneurship program apart is its Entrepreneur-in-Residence program, which brings experienced entrepreneurs and investors to campus for five to eight weeks. Students can meet with these entrepreneurs one-on-one and ask questions about entrepreneurship in a confidential setting. The school also has a Private Equity Internship Program, which gives students a greater understanding and first-hand experience in the sometimes hard-to-understand private-equity field.

The entrepreneurship MBA program at CSU San Bernardino is strongly tied to its community--the school brings in speakers from local businesses, and it also sends out its students to act as consultants and interns. Then there’s the new Integrated Technology Transfer Program, started in July ’05 and launched in collaboration with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. The program was designed to train minority students, scientists and engineers in entrepreneurship, technology transfer and commercialization of innovation while they gain a graduate certificate in technology entrepreneurship.

Looking for something high tech? Going beyond granting MBAs, the University of Washington Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship offers a multidisciplinary Ph.D. program in technology entrepreneurship, hoping to produce the next generation of entrepreneurship faculty focused on high tech. Graduate students also get the opportunity to apply for the WRF Capital/Gates Technology Entrepreneurship Fellowship, which is awarded to teams of four or five students in the sciences to assess the commercial value of new technologies.

The McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship has completely offers an approach that starts with a general overview of business basics then moves on to specific topics as students go through the process of starting their own businesses. The program’s whole focus is on moving an idea to reality—no matter what that idea is. Students have access to three full-time entrepreneurship mentors as well as a student law clinic.

The Innovation & Entrepreneurship Institute isn’t stuck in the business school at Temple University--it extends to all 17 schools and colleges on campus. The program emphasizes hands-on learning and brings together students, entrepreneurs, mentors, alumni, faculty and business advisors from diverse backgrounds to work on real-time projects. Another great student resource is an innovation lab that provides support and space for student startups and features workrooms, staff and access to entrepreneurs who are always ready to give advice.

Interested in international business? All entrepreneurship MBA candidates at the Monterey Institute of International Studies must create an international business plan to contribute a global perspective to their work and get hands-on experience with international business. Other aspects of this worldly program include a foreign language component, classes in cross-cultural communications and partnerships with international organizations.

IU Bloomington’s entrepreneurship MBA isn’t just about training future entrepreneurs. The Entrepreneurial Management Academy is both for students who want to become entrepreneurs and those who want to become managers in innovative organizations. The program offers exposure to emerging life sciences, high-tech and fast growth companies as well as venture capitalists, angel investors and other professionals involved in the entrepreneurial process.

The University of Louisville’s new MBA in entrepreneurship focuses on the entrepreneurial aspects of management in all types of firms--from startups to mature corporations. The program has a strong group focus, with team teaching, group problem solving and corporate partnerships all being important parts of the curriculum. The students also take all their courses together throughout the two-year program, giving them the opportunity to learn from each other and develop close relationships.