Top MBA Programs for Producing Founders: 2017-2018 Report
Recently, PitchBook released its latest 2017-2018 Top 50 Universities Report. The ranking focused on those universities that produced the “ultimate building blocks of the venture industry: founders.”
This ranking is vastly different from rankings of top schools for entrepreneurship by U.S. News & World Report, Princeton Review, and Entrepreneur Magazine, all of which focus on factors like peer assessment surveys, curriculum, and entrepreneurial study options. Instead, PitchBook looked at a single criterion: founders of companies who received venture capital (VC) funding between January 1, 2006, and August 18, 2017, and where they went to school.
The report provides a fairly detailed breakdown of top undergraduate programs, companies (by capital raised), MBA programs, female founders, unicorns (companies that have attained the coveted $1 billion evaluation), and more. This article will focus solely on the results that relate to MBA programs, including information on female founders and unicorns.
Top MBA Programs
For the 2017-18 academic year, the top 10 MBA programs to produce founders who received VC funding were ranked as follows:
- Harvard Business School (HBS): 1,203 entrepreneurs, 1,086 companies, and $28,495 million raised
- Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB): 802 entrepreneurs, 716 companies, and $18,259 million raised
- University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School: 666 entrepreneurs, 585 companies, and $16,001 million raised
- INSEAD: 455 entrepreneurs, 406 companies, and $7,795 million raised
- Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management: 445 entrepreneurs, 417 companies, and $5,680 million raised
- Columbia Business School: 441 entrepreneurs, 410 companies, and $5,465 million raised
- MIT Sloan School of Management: 437 entrepreneurs, 384 companies, and $7,797 million raised
- University of Chicago Booth School of Business: 405 entrepreneurs, 368 companies, and $5,470 million raised
- University of California – Berkeley Haas School of Business: 344 entrepreneurs, 314 companies, and $5,191 million raised
- UCLA Anderson School of Management: 247 entrepreneurs, 232 companies, and $3,957 million raised
HBS stands out immediately for producing founders who receive VC funding. Harvard produced twice as many founders as its next closest competitor, and those founders pulled in $10M more in funding for their 1,000+ companies.
As for the reason behind Harvard’s success, there are multiple elements that contribute to its production of entrepreneurs. The school is home to the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, which offers programs for budding entrepreneurs including curricular offerings (over a dozen courses), a New Venture Competition (which offers $300,000 in cash prizes), the Rock Accelerator, the Harvard Innovation Lab, and even a Loan Reduction program that supports graduating entrepreneurs with a one-time, need-based award of $10,000 to $20,000. HBS’s extensive alumni network also provides students with connections with managing directors, partners, and founders of top VC firms including Bain Capital Ventures, Apax Partners, and Accel Partners.
Another standout for the 2017-2018 year was INSEAD. The only non-U.S. MBA program to appear in the top 10, it also moved up a spot this year over last. INSEAD grew from 393 entrepreneurs, 348 companies, and $6,131 million in capital raised to 455, 406, and $7,794 million respectively.
INSEAD’s students are supported by the INSEAD Centre for Entrepreneurship (ICE), which was founded in 2003. The center offers MBA students a chance to participate in the INSEAD Venture Competition (IVC), Entrepreneurship Bootcamps, and the Entrepreneurship Teaching Innovation (ETI) Fund, which supports the development of the “Your First Hundred Days” elective for budding entrepreneurs.
Another MBA program of note is MIT Sloan School of Management, which was fourth in capital raised on this year’s PitchBook ranking. This could indicate more successful companies coming out of MIT or a higher percentage of VC funding available to Massachusetts’ graduates.
Some of the unique entrepreneurship opportunities available from other top programs include Stanford GSB’s Startup Garage, an intensive, hands-on project course for MBA students, as well as MIT Sloan’s Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, which includes an accelerator, coaching, and various events. Finally, the Penn Wharton Entrepreneurship Center offers resources, events, and courses for MBAs looking to explore, develop, launch, and scale a startup.
Top Female Founders & Unicorns
PitchBook also reviewed the top MBA programs for female founders. Once again, HBS and Stanford GSB ranked first and second, respectively, with 202 and 119 female founders. Columbia Business School ranked third with 77, Wharton ranked fourth with 71, and MIT came in at fifth with 60 female founders.
As for the unicorns, the top five MBA programs are similar to the previous lists.
- HBS: 22 entrepreneurs, 17 companies
- Stanford GSB: 14 entrepreneurs, 11 companies
- Wharton: 11 entrepreneurs, 8 companies
- INSEAD: 8 entrepreneurs, 7 companies
- MIT Sloan: 6 entrepreneurs, 6 companies
This article has been edited and republished with permissions from Clear Admit.
Been Waitlisted? Here’s What to Do (And Not Do)
There’s an art to the waitlist, and it can be mastered.
Remember, you’ve probably been waitlisted for a reason. For one, you’re qualified. Otherwise, you would have received a denial. Unfortunately for you, other candidates had a bit more of an edge. Maybe their GMAT scores or GPA was higher. However, your dream school might not be theirs, so there’s always that chance that enough applicants will deny the offer, and the school will, in turn, offer a place to you.
The waitlist can also serve as a sort of test for applicants the school isn’t 100 percent sure about. Here are a few simple tips to help you put your best foot forward while on the waitlist and show your dream school that it needs you just as much as you need it.
Follow Instructions
Schools are pretty clear about how they want you to respond to their notice. If they ask that you not send a letter, then don’t—no matter how much your heart aches to. If they ask for another letter of recommendation, send one as soon as possible. It’d be even more effective if a former colleague or mentor who attends/attended the school or works at it write the letter (assuming they know you personally). Don’t hesitate to do whatever the school asks from you, especially if it is your first choice. That’s the kind of attitude that may lead you where you want to go. But don’t do too much if the school doesn’t ask for it.
Last year, Clear Admit wrote about this dilemma, saying, “ignoring the adcom’s instructions is ultimately going to reflect badly on you. Though policies discouraging communication from waitlisted candidates may seem frustrating or unfair, it’s important to respect and abide by the preferences of each school.”
Clarify Your Intentions
If you plan to wait it out, it may be important to let the school know. If the school is your first choice, let your contact there know as well. Whatever it is that you plan to do next, inform the school. You must do all this, of course, without appearing too cloying and without disregarding whatever instructions the school provided in the waitlist notice. If schools know, however, that you’ll definitely accept their offer, there’s a better chance they’ll offer it to you than that waitlist applicant from whom they never heard back. They also want to know how interested you are, so keep in touch.
“There are candidates who are offered a place on the waitlist and then we never hear from them again. And there’s candidates who don’t overwhelm us with contact but at least stay in touch and help us remember them,” said James Holmen, Director of Admissions and Financial aid at Indiana University—Bloomington’s Kelley School of Business, to U.S. News.
Retake GMAT
Even if a school doesn’t ask this from you, it still might be a good idea to retake the GMAT. Some of the most common gaps in applications include a low GMAT score and GPA. If a school doesn’t accept you the first time around, chances are it had something to do with one of those factors. And your GMAT score, at least, you can change. Unless you scored an 800. Then, you’re a genius, and something is really wrong with the school to which you applied.
Really, though, any time something changes in your application, feel free to inform the school, which includes updated GMAT scores. But if you receive a promotion or a job change, that’s something worth telling them too.
Consider Plan B
This really is a personal decision. Are you in a rush to get that MBA? If so, then it might be a better idea to hop on it as soon as you can and forget that waitlist. You’ve likely been accepted into a number of other MBA programs. But have you been waitlisted at your dream school? Is it one of the best in the world? Well, then, it might be worth waiting it out because you have a chance. If they don’t go with you this time, you can increase your chances next round by doing some of the tips laid out above.
“If you’re wait-listed, it means you’re a great candidate,” U.S. News reported. “You can apply next year. So, honestly, a year plus or minus doesn’t change things.”
Good luck, and chill out. Everything will turn out for the best in the end.
Harvard Business School Announces Largest-Ever Scholarship Donation
Harvard Business School (HBS) yesterday announced its largest-ever donation for scholarship aid—a $12.5 million pledge that will help support students who were the first in their families to attend college, among others. The pledge comes from HBS alumni Jonathan Lavine, Co-Managing Partner of private investment firm Bain Capital, and his wife Jeannie (both MBA ’92).
The first $10 million will support the Lavine Family Fellowship Challenge Fund, a matching fund designed to motivate others to donate in support of the school’s scholarship needs. The remaining funds will endow two $1 million fellowships—the Lavine Family Fellowship and the Herbert J. Bachelor Fellowship—and provide an additional $500,000 to the HBS Fund for various school priorities.
The Lavine’s have stipulated that, wherever possible, the fellowships be made available to first-generation college graduates in honor of Jeannie’s father, Herbert Bachelor, who was the first in his family to go to college. Bachelor worked 40 hours a week while an undergraduate at Harvard College to cover expenses but still accumulated a large amount of debt, which grew larger still as he earned his MBA from HBS (’68).
Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine
“It was his dream to have his own children be able to attend college without the stress of holding down a job or the added burden of student debt upon graduation,” said Jeannie Lavine in a press release announcing the gift. She followed in her father’s footsteps, obtaining both her bachelor’s and MBA degrees from Harvard. “He was able to make that dream come true for my siblings and me, and Jonathan and I would like to pay that forward and give other people the same opportunity, especially those who are the first in their family to attend college,” she continued. “We know that intellect is not distributed based on income, and neither should a top education.”
HBS Admissions Is Merit-Based, Need-Blind
HBS prides itself on its merit-based admissions policy, which means that an applicant’s ability to afford tuition does not factor into the admissions process. Once students are admitted, fellowship grants are awarded based solely on financial need. Approximately half of the HBS class receives financial aid each year—$37,000 per student on average—and the school provided $35 million in financial aid to MBA students in the 2016-17 academic year.
“We are thrilled about this gift and grateful to the Lavine family because students who are the first generation in their family to go to college represent an important and needed perspective in the classroom,” HBS Managing Director of Admissions and Financial Aid Chad Losee told Clear Admit. “We admit based on merit and support financially based on need, which makes us different from other business schools,” he added. “Everyone here is here for a reason: because of their talent and merit and what they bring as a leader.”
Close to 10 percent of the HBS class each year is comprised of first-generation college graduates, according to Losee. “We hope this gift and this announcement will help get the word out to people from all different backgrounds who otherwise may feel like HBS isn’t accessible to them,” he said.
Earlier this year, HBS announced another fellowship likewise designed to support students with limited financial means. The Forward Fellowship, announced in July 2017, will award between $10,000 and $20,000 per year to students from lower-income backgrounds above and beyond HBS need-based fellowships. Unlike the HBS need-based fellowships, which are awarded based on students’ individual financial situations, the new Forward Fellowships take into consideration the applicant’s family circumstances and financial history so the available funds can be distributed to those who need them most. These can include not only students who grew up in lower-income households, but also those who plan to provide financial support for their parents during their graduate school careers or after obtaining their MBA.
“We want HBS to be the place where the best leaders from anywhere in the world can come and thrive and be successful,” Losee said. “This most recent gift from the Lavines is great and continues to tell the story that we want to support students when they get here.”
Lavine Family Philanthropic Roots Run Deep
The Lavines’ gift adds to the financial aid resources available to HBS students and builds on the couple’s history of philanthropy, which has long been focused on creating a more equal playing field for all through access to quality education. Jonathan serves as chair of the national Board of Trustees for City Year, an organization focused on reducing the high school dropout rate in U.S. cities. And the couple has also made major contributions to uAspire, an organization focused on providing financial resources to attain a postsecondary education; LIFT, a national nonprofit focused on breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty; and numerous aid programs at Columbia University, where Jonathan also serves as vice chair of the Board of Trustees.
In addition, they are long-time benefactors and actively involved at Harvard. In 2011, they established the Lavine Family Cornerstone Scholarship Fund to support four undergraduates annually through Harvard’s financial aid program. In 2012, they established the Lavine Family Humanitarian Studies Initiative at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health to support the training and education of humanitarian relief workers. They also both serve on the dean’s advisory boards at HBS at the School of Public Health and co-chair the latter school’s capital campaign.
“We’re proud to support the work of great academic institutions, because we know first-hand the impact they can have on the world,” said Jonathan Lavine in press release. “There is no greater way to improve someone’s future than giving them access to high quality, post-secondary education. We spent a great deal of time discussing with Dean [Nitin] Nohria our passion for education and how inspired we are by my father-in-law’s journey and appreciative of the opportunity our parents provided us. As a result, we decided that this is the best way to bring those interests together.”
Financial Aid at HBS Is Personal
Losee notes that the newly established Lavine fellowships also help highlight how personal the financial aid process at HBS. “The Lavines will be matched with the individual students they are supporting,” he says. “They will meet them and can develop a mentoring relationship with them.” HBS also features an annual dinner that brings together all HBS donors and the students their gifts help support, he said.
Calling them “the lifeblood of the institution,” Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Senior Associate dean of the MBA program, noted that gifts like the Lavines’ benefit not only the students who receive them but also the school as a whole. “They allow us to focus exclusively on filling our classrooms with the very best students,” he said in a release. “Our learning community is enriched by diversity in all its forms, and the fellowships we offer make it possible to bring people here from all walks of life around the globe.”
Learn more about the Lavines’ $12.5-million gift to support scholarship aid at HBS.
This article has been edited and republished from Clear Admit.
A Recommendation Revolution Is Underway in MBA Admissions: What You Need to Know
I’m busy, you’re busy, your boss is most definitely busy. Indeed, publications ranging from Men’s Health to the Atlantic, the Washington Post to Forbes are all reporting that “busyness“ has become the new status symbol for our times. Which is part of what makes asking someone to write you a letter of recommendation for business school so daunting. Now, try telling that person that you actually need five different letters for five different schools. Oy vey.
As uncomfortable a spot as it puts applicants in—it’s no better for recommenders. Even your most vociferous supporter is going to wonder what in the world she’s gotten herself into when she realizes that helping you in your pursuit of acceptance to business school means taking time away from work or play or family or whatever else to labor over leadership assessment grids, each a little different from the one before, and write 10 slightly different answers to 10 slightly different questions. Here’s hoping that your top-choice school doesn’t happen to be the last one she gets around to…
Good news. The graduate management education industry recognizes the strain that letters of recommendation put on applicants and recommenders alike and has been wrestling with ways to make the process easier for everyone involved. To this end, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) established a committee made up of admissions representatives from dozens of leading business schools to brainstorm about ways to lessen the burden while still collecting the third-party assessments of candidates that are so critical to the MBA application process.
GMAC Pilots Common MBA Letter of Recommendation
As an outgrowth of that committee’s work, GMAC last year piloted a common MBA letter of recommendation (LOR) that schools can choose to incorporate into their applications to reduce the burden placed on applicants and recommenders alike.
“The Common Letter of Recommendation (LOR) effort is intended to save you and recommenders valuable time by providing a single set of recommendation questions for each participating school,” reads the GMAC website. “This allows your recommenders to use the same answers for multiple letter submissions, alleviating the workload of having to answer different questions for each school multiple times. You benefit because it makes the ask for several different letters to be written on your behalf much easier.”
Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, NYU Stern School of Business, and Michigan’s Ross School of Business were among the first schools to pilot the Common LOR last year. In addition to a single set of open-ended essay questions, the pilot Common LOR also included a leadership assessment grid inviting recommenders to rate applicants on 16 “competencies and character traits” grouped into four main categories of achievement, influence, personal qualities and academic ability.
“At Johnson, we saw the Common LoR as a clear opportunity to improve the admissions process for candidates and their recommenders in a way that would also add value to our own assessment of applicants,” Judi Byers, Johnson executive director of admissions & financial aid, told Clear Admit. “A thorough and consistent review is important to us and the grid provides a straightforward base of insights that can be assessed and compared reliably while the accompanying letter adds meaningful detail and context,” she added.
Soojin Kwon, managing director of full-time MBA admissions and program at Ross, sees applicants and recommenders as the main beneficiaries of the Common LOR and is pleased that more schools are coming on board. “As more schools adopt it, applicants won’t have to feel like they’re burdening their recommender with completing multiple rec letters with different questions and ratings grids,” she told Clear Admit. “This year, more than a dozen of the top 20 schools are using it.”
Ross was also among the schools to first pilot the Common LOR last year, and Kwon served as part of the GMAC committee that helped craft it.
Common Questions Easy to Agree on, Common Leadership Grid Not
“What we found in using the Common LOR this year past year was that the questions gave us helpful insights into applicants, particularly on the important area of constructive feedback. The questions, however, were fairly similar to what we and other schools were using before, so it was easy for the AdCom to use it,” she notes.
Those questions are as follow:
- Please provide a brief description of your interaction with the applicant and, if applicable, the applicant’s role in your organization. (50 words)
- How does the performance of the applicant compare to that of other well-qualified individuals in similar roles? (E.g. what are the applicant’s principal strengths?) (500 words)
- Describe the most important piece of constructive feedback you have given the applicant. Please detail the circumstances and the applicant’s response. (500 words)
- Is there anything else we should know? (Optional)
“The rating grid was quite different from what we’d used in the past,” Kwon continued. “It was also the most difficult part for the GMAC advisory group to develop and get agreement upon. The group worked this past year to revise and simplify the grid so that AdComs could get more meaningful insights from it.”
This year, the 16 competencies and character traits from the original grid have been distilled to 12, with specific questions about analytical thinking and information seeking omitted. Johnson and Ross have both incorporated the revised leadership grid into the LOR distributed to applicants as part of their applications, as have most other schools that have this year decided to incorporate both the grid and open-ended essay question portions of the form. UT’s McCombs School of Business and Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, notably, still seem to feature the earlier version of the leadership grid in their application, the one that calls on recommenders to assesses applicants on 16 competencies and traits.
HBS Class of 2019 Profile Reveals Subtle Shifts, New GRE Details
The official Harvard Business School (HBS) Class of 2019 profile is now out—capturing in numbers and pie charts the real live students who started class for the first time yesterday. Not a lot has shifted since HBS released its preliminary class profile earlier this summer, although the Class of 2019 now includes 928 students, suggesting that 13 of those the school was expecting to enroll when it originally reported the class size at 941 made other plans. There are 942 students in the Class of 2018, by comparison.
The percentage of minority students also slipped slightly, from 26 percent reported in the preliminary profile to 25 percent in the actual class (last year’s actual percentage was 26 percent). Female students comprise 42 percent of the class, as earlier reported, again down one percentage point from last year.
In terms of median GMAT, 730 is still HBS’s reported score. That’s the same as last year—and as predicted earlier in the summer. The score range reported included a low of 580 and a high of 790, with the middle 80 percent of the class falling between 700 and 770. Last year, the middle 80 percent was a shade lower, coming in between 690 and 760.
HBS Joins Wharton, Yale in Posting GRE Scores
New in the actual profile posted today are stats on GRE scores, marking the first time HBS has published such data. Chad Losee, the Managing Director of Admissions and Financial Aid, also made a point of sharing this information in a recent blog post, revealing that 12 percent of the class submitted GRE scores and the remaining 88 percent submitted GMAT scores.
“The GRE and GMAT are different tests … and we are truly indifferent about which one you submit,” Losee writes. “Really. We are familiar with each test. Choose the one that allows you to best show your strengths, then move on to the other parts of the application.”
According to the recently posted profile, median GRE scores for both verbal and quantitative at HBS were 164. The score range for verbal was 147 to 170, and the range for quantitative was 151 to 170. HBS did not provide information about the average writing score.
The Wharton School, too, shared GRE data for the first time this year, although specific details about what percentage of the class opted for one test over the other were not made available. Wharton reported average scores, not median scores: 163 verbal, 162 quantitative, and a 4.7 average writing score. The Yale School of Management (SOM) also included GRE test scores in its Class of 2019 profile (median verbal, 166; median quantitative, 164; middle 80 percent verbal, 157 to 170; middle 80 percent quantitative, 160 to 169.)
If three makes a trend—then a trend we have of leading schools emphatically underscoring that they are indeed test agnostic by including GRE scores within their official class profiles.
“We Know You’re Much More Than a Test Score”
In his post, Losee also took pains to underscore that much more than scores go into determining who joins the HBS class each year.
“We know you are much more than a test score,” he writes. “The whole application and interview process are designed to help us get to know you. We’re trying to imagine what you would contribute in the HBS classroom and community. As I’ve written before, our learning model depends on a wide range of talent and perspectives in each class—and we know that not all that talent is measurable in a test.”
Obviously unchanged from the preliminary profile were the total number of applications HBS received this year—10,351—a 6 percent uptick over last year. The profiles posted today and earlier this summer both cited an 11 percent admission rate—which would indicate that 1,138 students made the cut—and a 91 percent yield.
This story has been edited and republished with permissions from Clear Admit.
The MBA Application: Know Your Audience
As Round 1 deadlines approach, applicants are coming to understand that applying to business school is an incredibly demanding process. In addition to taking the GMAT, assembling academic transcripts and providing recommendation letters, candidates are required to draft multiple essays, job descriptions, lists of activities and more.
With the obvious incentive to save time wherever possible, it’s understandable that many applicants simply cut and paste content from an existing résumé and write about their work in the manner that comes most naturally. However, in doing so, countless candidates each year assemble their materials without ever asking a fundamental question.
Who will read my MBA application?
While the answer to this question may vary from school to school, one thing is certain: It is unlikely that the person reading your MBA application will have an intimate level of familiarity with your specific industry or job function. This being the case, if you use industry-specific jargon or assume prior knowledge of your field on the part of the admissions officer, you will undoubtedly lose your reader.
It’s also important to keep the big picture in mind; many applicants become so mired in the details of their own work and role that they fail to provide sufficient context for an outsider to understand the impact of one’s efforts to the department or organization as a whole. Write about your experiences in a way that the average person will understand. While this is easier said than done, it underlines the importance of sharing your materials with an unbiased adviser (ideally not a work colleague or family member) to make sure that you aren’t off-base with some of your assumptions.
For some extra resources on how to perfect your application, read up on the Clear Admit Essay Topic Analyses for each school, read interviews with members admissions committees, and visit the Clear Admit shop for the informative Clear Admit School Guides. The School Guides offer in-depth, side-by-side comparisons of your target schools and their peer programs. The Clear Admit Strategy Guides and Interview Guides provide added insight into all aspects of the admissions process.
This article has been edited and republished with permissions from Clear Admit.
