So I finished applying to all of my colleges and am ready to narrow down my selections once I receive my admission letters. I know that I would like to have a career in business, but I had trouble narrowing it down from either business management or entrepreneurship. Either I want to start my own business or be part of a management team in an already established company, but I’m not sure yet.
Here are the schools I applied to:
Babson College
Bentley University
Boston College
Bryant University
Northeastern University
Providence College
I ask for you to rank these colleges when it comes to their management/entrepreneurship programs, providing their pros and cons for each of them. Thanks!
Based on Babson’s singular reputation in entrepreneurship, I probably would recommend it first from among these schools when considered by your criteria. For a broader academic experience, strongly consider Boston College (if offered admission).
All good business schools. As @merc81 states, Babson is known for entrepreneurship.
But please understand, being an entrepreneur is not something you learn in school. It comes from within. You certainly can learn a lot about aspects of running a business in school and that’s important That will certainly help an entrepreneur organize their ideas and provide a structure to bring them to market. Entrepreneurism is about creating value for others in the form of a product or service.
@merc81@rickle1 Thank you for your advice. Let me tell you a little about myself. I’m the director of the school newspaper (successor of previous director), television network (co-founder), and the intercom morning announcements (co-founder) which acts as the school radio. I had the opportunity communicating with team members, the school community, and meeting the demands of supervisors. Out of all these clubs, I had more experience in making internal reforms in the newspaper since it was falling apart with inefficiencies. I wrote my Babson essay on how I flipped the newspaper (I applied EA to Babson) and I got accepted.
Now I’m don’t want to get off topic here, but at this point I’m struggling to choose whether my experiences will be best fit for business management or entrepreneurship. I think I want to work for a management team for a news organization, either newspaper, television, or radio. But there is that possibility that I may want to start up a new media company… who knows.
My follow up question is how is Babson College when it comes to business management?
You’ve shown impressive achievements that will leave a legacy, @joemamaskitchen. Nice job!
Babson is a business specialty school. While it’s especially recognized for, as noted, entrepreneurship, it also offers strong programs in core business sub-areas such as accounting and marketing. I’m not sure about its management programs specifically, but I think they’d be equivalent to Babson’s overall reputation in business (so quite good). Congratulations on your acceptance there!
@joemamaskitchen Excellent work so far and congratulations! Love the initiative you take. I’m not an expert on Babson’s programs. I do know it’s known for the entrpreneur track and imagine it’s strong in other general business areas. An offshoot to that is at a school like Babson, you may meet other students that are likeminded and exlore business ventures. Lots of creative business juices flowing in that environment.
BU is a very strong communications school (broadcasting, journalism, etc.) You may want to speak to them about the business side of media and see if they have relevant coursework. Sumner Redstone, CEO of ViacomCBS has donated millions to BU. They may have some useful connections for internships and things like that. (Emerson has something related to the business side of media too).
One of the criticall traits of successful business people, including entrepreneurs, is uncovering opportunites and connecting the dots. You strike me as a go getter who is quite capable of that. The thrill is in the chase…
I think that entrepreneurship as a field of study works best when combined with another major or concentration. The comments above about the link between entrepreneurship and the media is one good example. So colleges could be looked at with that in mind.
I agree with Babson as a focus.
Walk down their entrepreneurial hall of fame of grads. It’s a real thing. In my experience there in an executive leadership program, it really was fantastic.
Bryant University in Rhode Island is really on the move and has international trade focus that is really compelling as well.
I also think that any major business school within a flagship or larger private can offer many of the same things.
And plenty of entrepreneurs come out of different programs focused around cs, neurosciences and good old fashioned networking at any top school.
Also a good entrepreneur is not solely waiting for inspiration to strike. The best serial entrepreneurs outside of the unicorn circuit are those who have incredibly good business fundamentals. Capital management, team building, supply chain, marketing and fund raising. The basics are really important. Foundational grounding as a realist and being an honest broker go a long way for most start ups to be success. Everyone thinks of Facebook twitter and Uber as examples. Most entrepreneurs are grinding it out and making big bucks out of the limelight.
Alumnus Arthur Blank’s recent 50 million dollar gift, the single largest gift in Babson’s 100 yr history will establish the Arthur M Blank School for Entrepreneurial Leadership at Babson College and is an incredibly impressive investment in the college. Babson has been ranked #1 Business school for Entrepreneurship for 23 years. Whether graduates go out on their own, or work for a company this thinking is what Babson students are known for. Best of luck with your decision.
Babson, Bentley and Bryant are essentially business schools with minimal offerings in other fields of study. You will be around only students with like interests. For some that is a pro, for others a con.
I can’t attest to the other schools but Babson offers well regarded law classes. They are also part of a consortium with Wellesley, and Brandeis and Olin College where Babson students can enroll in courses at any of the above. Particularly the opportunity to take liberal arts or a humanities class at Wellesley or Brandeis is a nice opportunity for Babson students to augment their business education with first class and no doubt rigorous course offerings at those institutions at no additional cost.