UPDATED: 15 Collected University Entrepreneurship Rankings
All in one place!
I’ll update this as new posts come out. Feel free to add others I’ve missed in the comments. I’ve called out Dartmouth where it appears.
Updated 10.2.16
2016 or most recent editions
TechCrunch ranks 15 schools with the most funded alumni and faculty startup founders in 2016 to date. Stanford tops the list with 232, followed by MIT at 152, down to Illinois with 55.
Mapping these to total enrollment size is a simplistic way to view the data, but it does give you an interesting sense of how pervasive entrepreneurism is on campus — and how truly rare it is to get to a funding round, even at Stanford and MIT, which clearly outstrip all others. I added Dartmouth (41 funded founders in 2016) to my spreadsheet — and look at that!
2016–2017 PitchBook Universities Report. Greatly expanded visualizations, especially w/r/t female founders and industry sectors. Dartmouth #25, Tuck #20. PitchBook’s report gets better and better each year.
America’s Most Entrepreneurial Universities 2015. Forbes. Dartmouth #9.
America’s Most Entrepreneurial Colleges 2015. Forbes.
Princeton Review/Entrepreneur’s Best Undergraduate Programs for Entrepreneurs 2016, and Best Graduate Programs for Entrepreneurs 2016. No Stanford? No Berkeley? These might be limited to e-ship degree programs. If that’s the case, the idea that someone who’s drawn to entrepreneurship should be constrained to schools offering degree programs without taking into account the broader ecosystem is kind of silly.
US News & World Report’s Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Rankings. Any top schools ranking that doesn’t include Stanford is flawed.
50 Best U.S. Colleges for Aspiring Entrepreneurs. Collegechoice.net.
How do you make sense of these rankings and better understand the ecosystems that produce them? You might find some perspective in this post:
Pre-2016 or earlier iterations
2015–2016 PitchBook Universities Report. Includes a new section on female founders. Dartmouth #27, Tuck #18.
13 Schools that have spawned the most $1B unicorn startups. Business Insider, using PitchBook Data. Dartmouth #10.
CrunchBase Report: Female Founders. Dartmouth #21 (#5 when controlling for enrollment).
Top Universities for VC Backed Entrepreneurs. PitchBook’s analysis expanded to include the Top 50 schools. Their first full report after a 2013 blog post on the Top 10 schools 2010-Q3 2013. The report has expanded each year since.
CB Insights University Entrepreneurship Report 2012. Not a ranking; tracks 6 schools’ startup funding metrics 2007–2011.
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I’m interested in Philanthropy + Entrepreneurship + Higher Ed. When these domains intersect, the value of a university/college’s innovation ecosystem can be fully unlocked. Ideas and learnings always welcome. What is your school working on? How is your company working with higher ed? @OaklandDD
