UC Berkeley is the #1 public school for startup founders in the 2022 Pitchbook Rankings

For the fourth year in a row, UC Berkeley topped the list as the nation’s best public university for startup founders, and it remains the second-best university among private and public schools, according to Pitchbook’s 2022 annual ranking of Universities published on Monday (October 31).

“That Berkeley is once again at the top of the world’s universities for funded startups will come as no surprise to many,” said Rich Lyons, director of innovation and entrepreneurship at Berkeley. “We have geography, we have culture, we have breadth, breadth and scale. How the campus ecosystem has developed over the past 20 years tell our story.”

Pitchbook, a data provider for the private and public equity markets, ranks the best undergraduate programs for startup founders based on the number of founders whose companies received first-round funding between Jan. October 31, 2022. Previously, the list included all founders dating back to 2006.

The founders included in the data obtained their undergraduate or master’s degree from the universities on the list.

Similar to last year, Stanford University took first place among private and public universities with 1,427 undergraduate founders, followed by Berkeley (1,408), Harvard University (1,184), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1,065) and the University of Pennsylvania (1,038). Rounding out the Top 10, Cornell University; Tel Aviv University; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; University of Texas and Yale University.

Pitchbook expanded its Top 50 to Top 100 ranking list this year, and while Berkeley was the only school in the UC system to crack the Top 10, other UC campuses made the Top 100: UCLA (11), UC San Diego (28), UC Santa Barbara (43), UC Davis (51), UC Irvine (74), and UC Santa Cruz (100).

Pitchbook also ranked Berkeley third in undergraduate programs for female founders, sixth in graduate programs for female founders, and fifth in graduate programs.