This story appears in the August 16, 2015 issue of Forbes. Sign up
By Corinne Jurney and Liyan Chen
The usual suspects still rule our annual Universities for Most Entrepreneurial Research this year, with Stanford University coming out on top once again. Only 3 newcomers make the top 20: Brigham Young University, Northeastern and the University of San Francisco, while San Diego State, UC Santa Barbara and Syracuse fall behind.
FORBES ranked the nation's most entrepreneurial schools based on the number of alumni and students who have self-identified as founders and business owners on LinkedIn (adjusted for total student body size). This year we are ranking both research universities and smaller colleges separately (see college rankings here).
Here are the top 20 startup research universities on our list:
1 Stanford University
Design for Extreme Affordability challenges graduates to design life-saving technologies and implement them in impoverished communities.
2Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A venture accelerator is a starting point for student entrepreneurs, including up to $20,000 in equity-free funding.
3 University of California, Berkeley
The Cal Berkeley Startup Competition has awarded nearly $1 million in prizes to budding companies.
4 Cornell University
This fall Cornell's Entrepreneurship Summit NYC will feature Philip Krim and Neil Parikh, founders of sleep startup Casper.
5 University of California, Los Angeles
The students selected to manage the UCLA Student Investment Fund control a $2 million portfolio.
6California Institute of Technology
The Entrepreneurship Club hosts boot camps and takes students on field trips to Silicon Valley.
7 Brown University
VC-backed custom T-shirt platform Teespring was started by two seniors.
8 Princeton University
Princeton hosts an annual startup competition and has a network of more than 10,000 graduate entrepreneurs.
9 Dartmouth College
Created numerous iconic franchises, from Dr. Seuss and Mother Jones to BLACKprint, an African-centric media platform.
10 Pepperdine University
Hosts an annual Business Plan Competition with Graciadio School and offers a Microenterprise program serving underprivileged residents of Los Angeles.
11 Yale University
In Tuna Tank, a student audience votes for business using a mobile app.
12 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
The School of Management has eight Entrepreneurs in Residence, all successful business leaders.
13 Northeastern University
It has partnered with more than 100 startup employers to connect students with six-month, full-time co-op experiences.
14 South
Methodist University
An arts-entrepreneurship program is geared toward increasing the possibilities for making a living from the arts.
15 New York University
It has a 6,000-square-foot lab for student entrepreneurs that features co-working spaces, event space and a fabrication lab.
16 Clark University
An entrepreneurship course recently inspired Rebecca Liebman to create LearnLux, a leading interactive website that teaches financial literacy.
17 Brigham Young University
The Mobile App Competition, which recently awarded student developers nearly $16,000, is just one of several annual startup competitions.
18 University of Colorado, Boulder
The Center for Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship teaches angel investors a crash course in pitching.
19 University of San Francisco
The co-founders of Starbucks met at this school, and the coffee giant's green logo is a nod to the university.
20 Howard University
It has 10,000 square feet of campus space set up for a Technology & Innovation Hub.
21 University of California, Santa Barbara
22 University of Texas, Austin
23 San Diego State University
24 American University
25 Harvard University
26 Boston University
27 Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
28 University of Southern California
29 University of Maryland, College Park
30 Northwestern University
31 Carnegie Mellon University
32 University of Denver
33 Florida Institute of Technology
34 Hofstra University
35 University of Miami
36 Miami University, Oxford
37 Brandeis University
38 Arizona State University
39 University of Pennsylvania
40 Tufts University
41 Syracuse University
42 University of Notre Dame
43 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
44 Lehigh University
45 University of Washington
46 Pennsylvania State University, University Park
47 Boston College
48 University of San Diego
49 University of Tulsa
50 University of the Pacific
Additional reporting by Jill Castellano, Lauren Feiner, Karen Hua, Maxine Joselow, Sergei Klebnikov and Natalie Sportelli.
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