Rutgers Business School’s strength in preparing MBA students to create new businesses and to demonstrate the innovative thinking of entrepreneurs was highlighted in a new ranking by Poets & Quants and Inc. Magazine.
The Rutgers MBA is ranked as the No. 24 Best MBA Program for Entrepreneurship in the world. That ranking placed Rutgers as the No. 1 Public MBA for Entrepreneurship in the Northeast and No. 1 among public business schools on the East Coast.
Rutgers is also positioned as the No. 4 MBA Program for Entrepreneurship among its peers in the Big Ten based on the ranking by Poets & Quants and Inc. Magazine.
“The ranking shows the strength of our faculty knowledge and the MBA curriculum that is imprinted on our MBA students,” Rutgers Business School Dean Lei Lei said. “In the face of the fast-changing world of technology, digitization and the Disruption Era, this specialty ranking is more important than ever.”
Learn more about the Rutgers MBA during an online information session on Thursday, Dec. 3.
The joint ranking set out to measure the entrepreneurial climate at the world’s top business schools. Last year’s inaugural ranking included only 27 schools. This year, the listing contains 50 schools.
Rutgers MBA student and entrepreneur Juan Salinas won $20,000 at Rutgers Business School’s annual business plan competition in 2018. The prize money helped Salinas expand manufacturing of his nutritious snack product P-nuff Crunch. On a recent episode of Shark Tank, Salinas made a $400,000 deal with entrepreneur Mark Cuban that promises to grow sales of P-nuff Crunch.
One of the major factors in the ranking was the percentage of MBA students who launched businesses after graduation. Several of the other categories that factored into measuring the programs: Percentage of MBA elective courses with 100% of the curriculum focused on entrepreneurship or innovation, total startup award money available to MBAs, and percentage of full-time faculty teaching an entrepreneurship or innovation course.
In addition to learning in the classroom, Rutgers MBA students with business ideas and nascent companies have the opportunity to compete for start-up funding in an annual business plan competition. The competition has helped to launch and grow numerous ventures founded by Rutgers MBA students, including Playa Bowls, Bergen Botanicals, Emma’s Premium Services, the Turf, Surf and Earthrestaurant, and P-Nuff Crunch. MBA student Juan Salinas, a food scientist turned entrepreneur, sealed a $400,000 deal with Mark Cuban on a recent episode of Shark Tank.
“This ranking demonstrates the strength of the entrepreneurial ecosystem around Rutgers Business School, said Doug Miller, associate dean for MBA programs. “When our MBA students want to start a business, or just learn how to be entrepreneurial in their corporate role, they can draw on our centers and faculty, coursework and technology from across the university, the start-up accelerator right in our Newark building, and a large network of alumni and investors.”
“This ranking was specifically about full-time MBA programs, but the benefits of the ecosystem extend to our more than 900 part-time MBA students as well,” Miller said. “We hope this recognition will attract more candidates with technical and scientific expertise who want to learn how to innovate and succeed as entrepreneurs.”
Among schools located on the East Coast, Rutgers ranked higher than Yale School of Management, University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School, the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.
