According to The Financial Times’ recent research on businesses, the ratio of Stanford, Babson and MIT alumni launching their own startups no later than 3 years after graduation is more than 1:3. All in all, 36% of 2013 students have started their own companies.
The phenomenon is particularly popular at Babson College, where more than a half of its graduates have launched new startups in the three years following their graduation. According to Poets and Quants, his percentage (52%) shows that Babson students are the most entrepreneurial in the world. Half of them, however, started their companies as an additional source of income and are still keeping their jobs at various companies.
Many more graduates start their own companies during the three-year window after graduation, rather than immediately after it. For instance, 25% of Wharton alumni have started new businesses within 3 years after graduation, compared to only 7% launching startups right after graduating from business school.
Eighteen out of Twenty-Five Most Entrepreneurial Schools Are Overseas
The top-5 in The Financial Times study of the most entrepreneurial schools are occupied by Stanford School of Business, MIT Sloan, Cambridge’s Judge School of Business and Berkeley Haas respectively.
According to the research, a large percentage of former MBA students have quit their corporate jobs to start their own businesses. Surprisingly, some of the most entrepreneurial graduates have finished schools outside the USA. For instance, the leading Babson school is followed by the University of Strathclyde Business School (UK), and Ipade Business School (Mexico), with 44% and 43% of graduates launching a startup within three years, respectively.
Out of the top-10, six are international schools, and 18 out of the top-25 are not located in the USA. All in all, the most entrepreneurial students can be found in the United Kingdom (35%), then Mexico (34%). Asian business schools are also showing growth in this respect, namely Japan (11%) and South Korea (13%). A third of new startups is headquartered in the U.S., and, in general, a quarter of the new entrepreneurs start their businesses in other countries.
For Many, Startups Are an Additional Source of Income
The Financial Times study has proved that there are more new entrepreneurs overseas than in the U.S. Still, a large percentage of these alumni are developing their startups as a ‘moonlighting’ job, not their main one. 76% Stanford graduates claim to obtain most of their income or all of it out of their newly launched startups, as do 64% at MIT Sloan, 43% at Harvard and 45% at Wharton.
The others, who are simultaneously pursuing a corporate career and developing their own business, are doing it due to student debt: they could not obtain enough money from their startups to pay it off quickly. Actually, student debt is a major reason for many graduates to put off their dreams of starting their own businesses and finding a career job instead. Many students are struggling to pay off their student debt instead of giving all their time and resources to their dream startups.
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