Babson Entrepreneurship Ranking Beats Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Yale

by | Nov 17, 2013

princeton-review-entrepreneurship-babsonBabson College is consistently ranked one of the top schools for entrepreneurship with both U.S. News and Princeton Review / Entrepreneur Magazine giving it top honors. But we were curious whether the data in LinkedIn Skill Endorsements would verify these prestigious research reports. LinkedIn’s Skill Endorsements is a tool members have to recognize their connections skills and expertise with just one click. Additionally they allow your connections the ability to confirm the assets on your own professional profile. We published the LinkedIn Skills list top 100 in November, 2012. However, LinkedIn recently removed the tool used to compile the list so we went searching for a new way to track the popularity of Skills. After all, having a lot of recommendations for a popular skill could lead to increased page views, job interviews or sales leads.

We went to the LinkedIn college alumni area and decided to use the number of endorsements for the skill “entrepreneurship” and “start-ups” as a test to see which U.S. University rated at the top. We ranked Babson against ten familiar names for creating entrepreneurs such as Stanford, Harvard, USC, MIT, CMU, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Yale and the University of Houston.

 

  • Stanford: Top 24 Skills 160,159 – Start-ups 10,532 – Entrepreneurship 7,689 – 11.4% total
  • Babson: Top 24 Skills 43,171 – Start-ups 2,148 – Entrepreneurship 2,401 – 10.5% of total
  • MIT: Top 24 Skills 93,290 – Start-ups 5,348 – Entrepreneurship 3,716 – 9.7% of total
  • Harvard: Top 24 Skills 160,159 – Start-ups 5,444 – Entrepreneurship 5,471 – 8.2% of total
  • Princeton: Top 24 Skills 47,804 – Start-ups 2,063 – Entrepreneurship 1,735 – 7.9% of total
  • Yale: Top 24 Skills 66,711 – Start-ups 2,108 – Entrepreneurship 1,874 – 5.9% of total
  • USC Top 24 Skills 193,052 – Start-ups 0 – Entrepreneurship 0 – 0% of total
  • CMU: Top 24 Skills 75,699 – Start-ups 0 – Entrepreneurship 0 – 0% of total
  • Penn: Top 24 Skills 111,980 – Start-ups 0 – Entrepreneurship 0 – 0% of total
  • Houston: Top 24 Skills 129,270 – Start-ups 0 – Entrepreneurship 0 – 0% of total

 

Babson entrepreneurship ranking

As of November 17, 2013

Stanford entrepreneurship ranking

As of November 17, 2013

According to LinkedIn, the number of times the skill “entrepreneurship” and “start-ups” have been endorsed, Stanford and Babson are the top two universities among our sample. However when focused on the skill in the research, “entrepreneurship”, Babson scores a 5.6% while Stanford only registers a 4.8%. This validates the research by Princeton Review / Entrepreneur Magazine and U.S. News which ranked Babson #1. Its a strong testimonial that Babson, undergraduate enrollment 2,015, can beat the Ivy League and other prestigious universities. This type of analysis will further LinkedIn’s case for being the best supplier of career data. Surprising insights from the data are that the University of Southern California (USC), CMU, Penn and Houston did not have either “entrepreneurship” or “start-ups” listed in their top 24 most endorsed skills. But they did rank well for “public speaking” so look for those graduates on a soap box in your town square. Source: Alumni data pulled on November 17, 2013 the data will change over time.

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