2007 Top Colleges for Entrepreneurs

A feasibility study led USC MBA graduate Alton Johnson, 38, to create his specialty beverage company, Bossa Nova Beverage Group. "We learned a great structure for evaluating opportunity--looking at things from the [perspective] of what changes are taking place in the market, how the market is growing and what the opportunities are," he says. After researching the antioxidant properties of the Brazilian a�ai berry, he saw a market prospect for a healthy drink incorporating the fruit. Launching the Los Angeles company in 2005, Johnson credits his entrepreneurial education with sharpening his business skills and teaching him to better articulate his vision, which has helped push Bossa Nova's sales to $25 million.

Find Your Niche

Getting into the global community is one highlight of joining a top-ranked entrepreneurial program. Another trend is environmental entrepreneurship, says George Solomon, director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Excellence at George Washington University in Washington, DC: "Green is good, [and] social entrepreneurship is growing."

Interested in social entrepreneurship? Check out the entrepreneurship program at Baylor University in Waco, Texas (No. 23 on our list of undergraduate programs). Social entrepreneurship classes call for students to work with entrepreneurship professors and engineering professors, for example, to develop business plans around sustainable technology. According to Kendall Artz, director of entrepreneurship at Baylor, "A particular project right now is to find productive, economic uses for coconut in Africa and other countries. We're also working on [other] social entrepreneurship projects." In addition, Baylor is offering an entrepreneurship minor for nonbusiness students starting this fall.��

Remember, this listing is a starting point for your research and you should explore programs outside the ranking, too. "Part of the issue with rankings [is that] schools have different kinds of missions that a ranking is not going to reflect very well," says William B. Gartner, professor of entrepreneurial leadership at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina. Investigate nationally recognized schools and local schools--both public and private--to find the right fit for you. While choosing between a public or private college will depend largely on your unique financial situation, Hoskinson says to make sure you ask about scholarships.

And while many private schools have large endowments, don't automatically assume that the education at a public school will be less rigorous, notes Solomon. In fact, an entrepreneurial education at a state school can be an excellent value. Gartner recommends considering the debt you will likely incur at different schools. If your goal is to graduate mostly debt-free to be in a better position to start your business, then make that a factor in your decision-making process.

Amit Nar, 22, used historically high rankings as a base point for his research and chose to enroll in our list's No. 1 undergraduate entrepreneurship program at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. "They have the best faculty for entrepreneurship--they guided me through the whole process," says Nar, who started writing his business plan as a student in 2005. "Entrepreneurship is the heartbeat of this school, and that's what I wanted--I wanted to be surrounded by people who are very passionate about entrepreneurship." After developing the idea for A Better Night's Sleep, a clinic in Easton, Pennsylvania, that diagnoses and treats sleep disorders, he won second place in Babson's April 2007 business plan competition, right before graduation. Having opened just this past September, Nar projects first full-year sales to reach about $500,000.