Hello everybody!

I found this website and I'm just engrossed now in my MBA search.

I have a quick question, maybe somebody could advise me. I am looking to do my MBA at a US school, and I would like to focus on entrepreneurship. My goals are to learn how to be a better entrepreneur, and experience life close to a startup ecosystem (Silicon Valley or New York City, mainly but I am open to other suggests.)

These are my shortlisted school:

Columbia
Stanford
Haas
NYU
Darden
Babson

My main question is, which of these is the best fit for my career goals? I know that Babson is not ranked as highly as the other schools but from what I have read it is a good school for entrepreneurship.

Any suggestions would be welcome!

The Valley seems a much larger and more open setting. Babson is a great school but the Bay Area will be very much more powerful.

@Alicia,

Babson is a great school, they pride themselves on being #1 in Entrepreneurship in various rankings.
However, Duncan gives a great advice about Bay Area. Also consider adding MIT to your list. Depending upon your GMAT score and other admission parameters, I would suggest to consider schools in Boston, MA and Bay Area, CA. Babson can be a good safety school.

Best,
Ayon

In general I'm a bit skeptical of entrepreneurship oriented MBA programs - I tend not to think that an MBA is the best route to starting your own business.

That said, an MBA can provide you with the skills you need to do so. But I usually advise people to keep their options open since it's not the easiest thing to get out of an MBA program and then simply 'be an entrepreneur.'

The best advice is usually to get into the best school you can and learn as much as you can, and most importantly, network like crazy. If you can get into Stanford, that's great, you'll have a ton of options and get a ton of connections, and being in the Valley is just sort of an added value if you're thinking about entrepreneurship.

I agreed with that skepticism for a long time. It's not just the debt of an MBA, it's also the outlook. However, I think there are some advantages: the focus on large problems and using other people's money. If you want to bookstrap, or start a niche/lifestyle/boutique business then a more project-based masters in entrepreneurship like the Babson-EMLyon course is great (http://www.babson.edu/News-Events/babson-news/Pages/100602-global-entrepreneurship-program-65-students-from-17-countries.aspx). The Manchester Masters of Enterprise is also great for bringing technical innovations to market: https://mec.portals.mbs.ac.uk/StudyEnterpriseWithUs/Postgraduatedegreeprogrammes/MasterofEnterpriseMEnt.aspx

Plus, if you think about it, the skills you pick up in entrepreneurship programs can be directly applicable to other functional areas in corporate. In learning entrepreneurship you're exposed to many different aspects of business, everything from strategy to finance, operations, etc. These directly translate to management in other fields. Plus, corporates in larger orgs often love entrepreneurs because they feel like entrepreneurship brings in new energy and agility to older firms.