Pitchbook: What are the best universities for startup founders?

Great entrepreneurs can come from anywhere, but some universities have a truly exceptional track record of producing future entrepreneurs.

PitchBook’s annual university rankings compare schools by tallying up the number of alumni entrepreneurs who have founded venture capital-backed companies. The undergraduate and graduate rankings are powered by PitchBook data and are based on an analysis of more than 144,000 VC-backed founders.

Stanford-educated founders top both the undergraduate and graduate lists. UC Berkeley took the No. 2 spot for undergraduate programs, and Harvard was second among MBA and other graduate programs. MIT ranks in the top four for undergraduate and graduate school rankings, despite having a total enrollment of just 11,934 in 2021.

Outside the US, Israeli colleges Tel Aviv University and Technion are among the highest-ranking undergraduate programs. Cambridge and Oxford in the United Kingdom made the top 10 in our graduate list.

For more insights, read our analysis of the 2022 PitchBook university rankings.