UW Ranked Top 5 for Entrepreneurship Nationally
New Princeton Review and Entrepreneur Magazine Collegiate Rankings released for 2025
Written by: Charles Trillingham, Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship
The best in the West just got a little better. For the third straight year, the University of Washington rose to historic heights in the national rankings for entrepreneurship programs by Princeton Review and Entrepreneur Magazine.
The 2025 rankings placed UW at #4 for undergraduate entrepreneurship programs nationally and #1 overall in the West region. This is the first time UW has been in the top five in 20 years and the highest ranking the undergraduate side has ever achieved. The undergraduate program built on its #9 ranking in 2024 (and #13 ranking in 2023) by reporting several important metrics including the number and type of entrepreneurship courses, resources and opportunities across the university and its branch campuses. Survey results also revealed over the past ten years, undergraduate alumni who studied entrepreneurship or took part in programming launched more than 1,400 new companies and brought in more than $1.1 billion in fundraising.
Graduate entrepreneurship programs also leapt in the 2025 rankings to #6 nationally and #2 overall in the West region (up from #7 in 2024 and #8 in 2023). UW graduate alumni have started more than 1,554 businesses and brought in just shy of a billion dollars in fundraising ($964 million) in the past ten years. This marks the second consecutive year (and second time ever) UW has been ranked in the Top 10 for “Best Entrepreneurship Programs” on both the undergraduate and graduate side.
“The commitment to helping student innovators and problem solvers start or continue their entrepreneurial journey has never been stronger at the University of Washington,” said Amy Sallin, director of the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship in the Foster School of Business. “Time and time again, we see that the end result is a stronger and more impactful business ecosystem across not just Seattle, but the Pacific Northwest and beyond.”
The University of Washington is one of only five schools in the nation to be ranked in the Top 10 on both the graduate and undergraduate side for 2025 entrepreneurship programs. The Princeton Review/Entrepreneur Magazine ranks each college and university using information gathered from extensive surveys.
Innovation Imperative Fuels Entrepreneurial Education
The 2025 rankings illuminate an already bright national and international spotlight on the University of Washington’s commitment to innovation. In late October, the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (NSF I-Corps) selected UW to be a critical part of a multi-university hub for commercializing and deploying “technologies in the fields of medical tech, energy, clean tech, agricultural and food tech, maritime and related technologies.”
Two weeks prior, the director of UW’s Institute for Protein Design, Professor David Baker, was part of a trio to receive the Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing an AI model that “cracks the code” on almost all known proteins, commonly referred to as the “building blocks of life.”
Meanwhile, student entrepreneurial offerings grew in forward-looking and cross-disciplinary ways with the official launch of the Buerk Center’s Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership (WE Lead) program. It promotes the advancement of women as entrepreneurs, leaders, investors, and agents of innovation at a time when female founders look to build on recently strong venture capital trends.
“The entrepreneurial spirit is strong at UW, as our students and researchers respond to pressing societal and economic challenges with novel ideas and ventures,” said François Baneyx, UW’s Vice Provost for Innovation and executive director of CoMotion. “We’re thrilled to see our colleagues and partners at the Buerk Center and across campus recognized for the critical role they play in UW’s innovation ecosystem, and we look forward to continuing to work together to support entrepreneurs and startups.”
This past academic year, CoMotion, UW’s collaborative innovation hub, opened a new headquarters in Condon Hall — home to the CoMotion Labs tech incubator and Startup Hall — on the edge of an ambitious new research, collaboration and community redevelopment called Portage Bay Crossing. The new district will also house the Washington Clean Energy Institute and its Testbeds, the Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine, and the aforementioned Institute for Protein Design.
The new HQ supports CoMotion’s longstanding impact on commercialization at UW, including successful UW spinoffs and startups, acquisitions of UW projects or startups by leading companies, and licensing of UW IP to industry leaders for further development.
On the academic side, the Foster School of Business and the UW College of Engineering built on an already strong foundation of collaboration by leading the Global Innovation Exchange in Bellevue. And in the past 18 months, UW Bothell location received funding for a new center focused on life sciences and biotech and UW Tacoma launched its own Entrepreneurship Academy.
Meanwhile, the growing foundation of impact across the university system is shared by an increasing focus on artificial intelligence, sustainability, and public health through academic programs offered in Computer Science, Bioengineering, Population Health and more.
UW president Ana Mari Cauce spoke in September on artificial intelligence and the tradition of encouraging innovation. “We have students now that come in already, from day one, they want to start their own companies,” she said.
The number of student founders developing and incubating their ideas through academics and extra-curriculars continues grow. For the second year in a row, the innovation and startup competitions hosted by the Buerk Center saw record participation from student teams. The Hollomon Health Innovation Challenge, Environmental Innovation Challenge, and Dempsey Startup Competition featured more new ventures and innovations than ever before by offering students from colleges and universities across the Pacific Northwest a premiere playground for entrepreneurship.
Or, as the Buerk Center’s Amy Sallin, who was named a Puget Sound Business Journal 2024 Woman of Influence, likes to say: “Building a better tomorrow is possible when you combine academics, experiential learning, and entrepreneurship like we do at the University of Washington.”
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Visit the Buerk Centers website at startup.uw.edu
Visit CoMotion’s website at comotion.uw.edu
Visit the UW Innovation Imperative website
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