When I took an internship with a pre-IPO startup in between my 1st and 2nd years of bschool at U of C I was nearly alone on the entrepreneurship career path. Today the route is more established and the infrastructure is filling out. From Inc.
An increasing number of MBA students are foregoing traditional summer internships in favor of a start-up experience, reports Bloomberg Businessweek.
Thirteen percent of this year’s Harvard Business School graduates founded or worked at a start-up last summer—a 4 percent increase since 2011—while 9 percent of both the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford Graduate School of Business’s graduating classes did the same.
“[Students] want a different skill set. They’re looking for a skill set that’s appropriate for start-ups and small fast growing companies, which is quite different from the skill set they’d need for a large company,” Prof. Erik Gordon, who teaches entrepreneurship at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and University of Michigan Law School, told Inc.
BTW, the BusinessWeek article by Erin Zlomek has some great information and anecdotes.
Business accelerators have become another popular destination for first-year MBA students looking to start a business over the summer. These programs, which support startups through a combination of grants and mentoring, legal, accounting, and other services, are highly competitive and frequently reject applicants who aren’t committed to dropping out of school if their companies flourish. “I made a spreadsheet of 55 or 60 accelerator programs of all different flavors. Some paid, some didn’t, some took equity,” says former Harvard student Danielle Weinblatt, 29.
Again, its great to see how much the infrastructure for entrepreneurial students is growing. As to be expected, much of this is coming bottom up or from off of campus.
via MBA Students: Why Take an Internship When I Can Start a Company? | Inc.com.
Campus Entrepreneurship 
Hi David, and greetings from Ann Arbor. Entrepreneurship has gotten huge here, with centers in the b school, the law school and engineering. The law school provides free startup advice to students all across campus. It’s a big change from the days when entrepreneurship was considered a little weird. Now it’s really weird, in the best way.
I agree with the start-up path I am a BBA student and I already have passed up on internships to join start-ups and even start my own companies. I Really enjoy your articles.