Four years and four victories. Poets&Quants has ranked the world’s best MBA programs for entrepreneurship for the past four years, and in each of those years, one school has ranked first: Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.
Once again in our 2023 list, Olin School comes out on top.
“We are thrilled to see the continued recognition of Olin’s dedication to entrepreneurship and innovation,” said Anjan Thakor, Acting Dean of Washington Olin. “This focus is part of who we are as a business school and academic community. This is the reason many of our students seek us out and come to WashU.
“The recognition confirms what we already know: for us, entrepreneurship education is not a trend. It is fundamental.
“When I hear students talk about what they’re learning at Olin, fostering their entrepreneurial spirit is always near or at the top of the list. They value the coaching provided by our faculty, the opportunities to work with and advise startups, and the exceptional opportunity to network with successful founders.
MICHIGAN ROSS AND ESADE IN TOP THREE
After WashU this year P&Q ranking is the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, its highest place in our ranking. After finishing third in the 2021 standings, Michigan Ross slipped to seventh place last year before rising to second place this year. After Michigan Ross, the Esade Business School in Spain. Esade has slowly moved up our rankings in recent years, finishing seventh in 2021, fourth in 2022 and now third.
After finishing second the past two years, Babson College slipped slightly this year to fourth. And to complete the top five, the London Business School, which participated in the ranking for the first time. The last two years, P&Q saw two international business schools make the top five in this ranking.
Arizona State University’s WP Carey Business School jumps 11 spots to sixth place. Rice University’s Jones School of Management slipped four places from third in 2022 to seventh this year. IE Business School fell three places, falling from fifth to eighth. Meanwhile, the University of California-San Diego moved up six spots to ninth and its first top-ten placement. And Harvard Business School rounds out the top ten.
A total of 37 schools were ranked this year, up from 38 last year.
METHODOLOGY REMAINS UNCHANGED FROM LAST YEAR
After making significant changes to the ranking methodology last year, including the addition of six new data points, the methodology has remained exactly the same this year. Sixteen data points are weighted from 15% to 2.5%. As in previous years, the two highest-weighted categories are the average percentage of MBAs who start businesses during B-school or immediately after and the percentage of MBA electives that are 100% focused on entrepreneurship and/or business. innovation.
Some of the other top-weighted categories include data on the number of members of the school’s main entrepreneurship club, incubator or accelerator space available for MBAs, entrepreneur-in-residence available for MBA and start-up scholarships available for MBAs. This year, we added data points to the methodology, such as the percentage of MBAs joining early stage startups in their first jobs after school B, the percentage of MBA professors actively involved in a startup outside the school and the number of mentors available for MBA.
We use ratios and percentages for all measures used in the methodology. We do this to get an idea of what the resources are for each student.
BEHIND WASHU DOMINATION
A few years ago, Olin Business School made entrepreneurship one of its four pillars, along with ‘values-based and data-driven’, ‘global’ and ‘experiential’.
“Few schools make entrepreneurship a real pillar and goal of the school,” says Doug Villhard, Academic Director of Entrepreneurship and Professor of Entrepreneurship at WashU. “Olin, I find, is an amazing place to get a world-class MBA education that prepares you for any career that also values creative and innovative thinkers. Entrepreneurship can be an occupation, but it is also a state of mind. Not everyone is going to start a business. But anyone can want a career where they stand out for their strategic thinking. This is what I like most about our program.
Interestingly, this broad approach to entrepreneurship shows up in our rankings because Olin is outright only one of 16 methodological categories, but placed high enough in many of them to claim the top spot again. This year. With the entrepreneurship pillar and focus in place, Olin continues to expand its entrepreneurial resources for students. The school has just created an MBA Entrepreneurship Scholarship Program, which offers up to five full MBA scholarships per year, including apartments and office space for scholarship recipients.
Villhard says the school has also expanded its startup consulting projects, pairing students with on-the-ground startups in Israel, Berlin, San Francisco, New York and St. Louis. WashU also recently launched an acceleration space called the League focused on students interested in ideas in the digital and tech space. “When I started 3.5 years ago, interest in Olin was around a quarter of the class,” says Villhard.
“Today, more than half of the MBA class has an entrepreneurial interest. It’s really fun to have such interest and to have so many students ready to go on the first day. Word is out that Olin is “all in” about entrepreneurship.
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