If your ultimate goal is to found a startup and become a successful entrepreneur or tech entrepreneur, the factors you should consider when choosing a business school can be very different than if your goal were to go into a corporate role, or to join a consulting firm.
If you were accepted to all of your dream schools, what factors would drive your decision to go to Harvard, Stanford, or Booth?
Would you make the decision based on the US News and World Report rankings for that year? Would you choose the best weather, or go to a school based on the number of friends you have in a certain city?
There are a variety of methods that different organizations have used to rank business schools for their strength in entrepreneurship, like the number of entrepreneurship-related courses, or the number of startups created by students. These are certainly important factors to consider and represent resources that might assist you on your journey to becoming a successful business owner. However, if you are an aspiring entrepreneur you should understand that cash is king and think about following the money.
According to data published by Poets & Quants, Stanford startups raised more than $980MM in 2013, nearly double what startups from Harvard Business School raised.
| School | Total funding (in millions) |
| Stanford | $980.91 |
| Harvard | $575.75 |
| MIT (Sloan) | $189.25 |
| U Penn (Wharton) | $70.45 |
| Babson (Olin) | $25.70 |
| Dartmouth (Tuck) | $21.10 |
| Yale | $20.20 |
| Chicago (Booth) | $18.20 |
| Columbia | $11.40 |
| Michigan (Ross) | $10.60 |
| Duke (Fuqua) | $5.50 |
| IE | $4.56 |
| Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) | $4.50 |
| Cornell (Johnson) | $4.35 |
| Boston University | $3.22 |
| University of Arizona (Eller) | $2.97 |
| University of Virginia (Darden) | $2.67 |
| Berkeley (Haas) | $2.45 |
| Oxford (Saïd) | $2.00 |
| IESE | $1.61 |
Stanford’s proximity to Silicon Valley and Sand Hill, the strip of road where the world’s most powerful venture capital firms like Sequoia, KPCB, Khosla, a16z, and DFJ are located, no doubt contribute to student founders’ ability to raise money.
Aspiring entrepreneurs can decide how to prioritize business schools however they want, but the data above shows, with extraordinary clarity, where the money lies.