Launch Pad to Success Thousands of colleges are getting down to business, turning today's students into tomorrow's business leaders. This list of best schools for entrepreneurs shows which ones make the grade.
By Nichole L. Torres •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
College is a time for exploration, and if you're interested in starting a business, it might be the ideal time to explore all that the top entrepreneurial programs in the country have to offer. To assist in your search for the best college for you, Entrepreneur has partnered with The Princeton Review--for the third consecutive year--to bring you our sixth annual listing of the top 50 entrepreneurship education programs in the country. Whether you're looking for the best 25 undergraduate programs or the top 25 graduate programs, we reached out to more than 2,300 different schools to help you navigate the exciting world of college entrepreneurship.
If you're like other students of your generation, you're gathering information before you set foot on any campus. "I'm getting contacted by more and more incoming students than before," says Raman Chadha, executive director of the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center at Chicago's DePaul University, the No. 2 ranked graduate program and the No. 7 ranked undergraduate program on our list. "Students will contact us before enrolling, saying, 'I want to learn how I can take advantage of the [entrepreneurship program].' "
Taking advantage of all that Babson College had to offer were Thomas Chevalier and Carlos Larracilla, co-founders of PeopleAhead, an online matching service that uses TrueMatch technology to connect employers with professional job candidates. These 2007 MBA graduates were accepted into the Entrepreneurship Intensity Track during their second-year studies and then paired with a mentor to help them launch the business. Larracilla and Chevalier were even able to grow their company in Babson's Hatchery Program, using incubator space on campus for more than a year to launch the business--up to three months after they graduated. "As an MBA student, there's a lot of coursework . . . what you really learn to do is prioritize in order to get the business going," says Chevalier, 28.
