Top entrepreneurial colleges ranked

Entrepreneur Magazine, with the help of the Princeton Review, has ranked the top 50 entrepreneurial colleges at both the undergraduate and the graduate levels.

These are the 10 Essential Elements of an Entrepreneurship Program, according to Entrepreneur Magazine:

1. Experiential learning


2. Approachable professors


3. Mentorship programs


4. Faculty experienced in entrepreneurship


5. Interdisciplinary program offerings


6. Community involvement


7. Partnerships with entrepreneurial organizations


8. Innovative and creative environment


9. Graduate support


10. A school that fits who you are

More than 900 undergraduate and graduate schools were surveyed. Schools were asked if they offer an entrepreneurial major or minor, what types of and how many entrepreneurial-appropriate courses they offer, and what entrepreneurial opportunities were available to students.

In addition, schools were quizzed about what percentage of their total student body was enrolled in an wntrepreneurship-related course for the 2006–2007 academic year, what percentage of formally enrolled entrepreneurship students in the most recent graduating class had launched a business since graduating, what percentage of those students are still in business, and what percentage of their entrepreneurship faculty had started, bought or run a successful business.

Finally, schools were asked whether they have partnerships with other schools that allow those schools to take advantage of the entrepreneurship program; how many officially recognized clubs and organizations they offer specifically for entrepreneurship students and the annual budget for those clubs and organizations; how many non-curriculum-based activities and/or competitions they offer in the area of entrepreneurship and the annual budget for those activities and/or competitions; how many officially sponsored mentorship programs they offer specifically for entrepreneurship students; and whether they offer entrepreneurship scholarships and the total dollar amount of those scholarships.

The top 10 undergraduate programs are at these schools:

1. Babson College


2. University of Houston


3. Drexel University


4. The University of Arizona


5. University of Dayton


6. Chapman University


7. DePaul University


8. Temple University


9. University of North Dakota


10. Loyola Marymount University

The top 10 graduate progras are at these schools:

1. University of Southern California


2. Babson College


3. The University of Arizona


4. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill


5. DePaul University


6. University of California, Los Angeles


7. Drexel University


8. Chapman University


9. University of South Florida


10. University of Illinois at Chicago

You can read the complete survey results.

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