Before Kai Skallerud even thought about business school, he was a third-year medical student.

Working previously as a medical scribe and later as a student, he observed physicians and assisted in entering patient care notes into the electronic medical record. He realized how incredibly inefficient the process was, so terribly time-consuming and outdated. The hours and clicks spent creating charts pulled doctors away from their hospital beds and away from their own families. Skallerud found charting and administrative inefficiency to be the biggest problem for providers year after year. It causes burnout and reduces the quality of life of doctors.

Kai Skallerud, MBA ’22

“It’s very, very complicated with all the reasons why it is, but the short story is that I knew we could do it better,” says Skallerud.

He decided to apply to business school to see if he could fix the problem. I would apply to only one school. If he were to get in, he would put med school on hold and try to make this idea bubbling in his head a reality.

School? Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis.

“I specifically decided on an MBA in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship in healthcare, and that’s why I chose Olin. I heard that the entrepreneurship program was very experiential, offering lots of opportunities to get hands-on experience in actually making things. That’s what I was looking for,” he says Poets and quants.

“I didn’t want to sit in a classroom with textbooks. I wanted to build. Especially given the opportunity cost of my decision to move away from medicine and do an MBA, I knew my time was extremely valuable. And I wanted to spend every possible minute in a way that I felt was actually moving the needle.”

WASHU OLIN AT THE TOP OF THE BUSINESS LACK FOR THE FIFTH CONSECUTIVE YEAR

It turned out that Skallerud could hardly have made a better decision. For the fifth year in a row, the Olin School of Business has ranked No. 1 in the Poets&Quants’ ranking of the world’s best MBA programs for entrepreneurship. In fact, Olin topped the list every year we did the ranking, starting with our 2020 issue.

“This fifth consecutive top ranking further validates our commitment to the critical role innovation plays in our economy and the entrepreneurial spirit of our students, alumni, faculty and staff,” said Olin Dean Mike Mazzeo. Poets and quants.

“It’s a pleasure to be part of a school where that spirit is embedded in our DNA and part of everyday conversations.”

Olin is followed by a new school in this year’s ranking, ESMT Berlin – one of the four European MBA programs ranked among the top 10.

The difference between no. 1 and no. 2 was extremely tight. Out of a total of 100 points spread across the 16 metrics, Olin scored 44.45 points and ESMT scored 43.55 – less than a point of difference.

“Entrepreneurship and innovation are a central pillar of ESMT and directly impact our programs and faculty. It is integrated into all our programmes, from the newly created MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship to our Executive MBA and the bespoke programs we develop for businesses,” says Rebecca Loades, Director of MBA Programs at ESMT. P&Q.

“A few factors that set our program apart: our global perspective, our entrepreneurial hub VALI Berlin, our access to Berlin’s startup ecosystem and our strong faculty expertise.”

ESMT Berlin made its debut on our business ranking this year and ranked 2nd. It is one of four European MBA programs in the top 10. Photo by ESMT

TOP 10 BUSINESS PROGRAMS FOR MBA

Only 5.66 aggregate points separated the top five in our 2024 MBA Entrepreneurship rankings.

By ESMT, Rice University Jones Graduate School of Management (scoring 40.21 points) climbed four spots to No. 3. That matches Rice’s 2022 ranking after falling to seventh in last year’s ranking.

Esade Business School in Barcelona, ​​Spain (39.53) fell one spot to no. 4, halting a slow but steady climb up our rankings over the past few years. Esade finished seventh in 2021, fourth in 2022 and third in 2023.

And the University of Michigan Ross School of Business (38.79) rounded out the top five, falling back from his highest of second place a year ago. Check out the table below for the top 10 companies in our 2024 Entrepreneur Ranking.

METHODOLOGY

For 2024, we have significantly changed our methodology. Over the years, we have ranked about 10 schools that did not provide data directly Poets and quants. We gathered what we could from public websites and other reports, but these schools were not given points where no reliable data could be found. This led to rankings where entrepreneurial powerhouses such as Stanford University’s School of Business ranked in the teens, and Harvard Business School struggled to make the top 10.

We did not rank these schools this year. These are generally large, prestigious programs in M7 that have a lot of entrepreneurial resources – and a lot of students. In any case, if you have the background, statistics, and personal story to get into Stanford, you will definitely have access to one of the best entrepreneurial ecosystems in the world. That’s why Stanford GBS consistently has the most MBAs here annual list of the best-funded MBA startups.

You’ll also be among hundreds of other celebrities vying for the same attention.

Our methodology is designed to measure how resources are allocated to individual students. We use percentages and ratios—based on the number of full-time MBA students in the program in a given year—to get a sense of what MBA-based entrepreneurial resources and experiences are like. This favors schools with smaller class sizes where the corporate dollar or tutor time is more concentrated.

The 28 schools in this ranking are entrepreneurial gems, though their MBA programs don’t usually get as much ink as the prestigious M7.

Other than this big change, our methodology is the same as last year. Read the full methodology hereand you can compare it with last year’s methodology here.

NEXT PAGE: ESMT entrepreneurial ecosystem + At Olin Business School, a culture of problem solving