Acton News

Acton Earns Top Honors from Entrepreneur Magazine

03.24.09

Entrepreneur magazine, the nation’s leading publication on entrepreneurship, has named the Acton School of Business one of the top 15 MBA programs in the country for Business Operations preparation. The magazine identifies Acton based on The Princeton Review’s “Student Opinion Honors for Business Schools” rankings.

The Princeton Review selected Acton based on survey results from over 19,000 business students at 296 schools. Specifically, Acton received top honors because of its students’ assessments of how they felt their courses prepared them to succeed in Operations.

Georgia Thomsen, Acton’s executive director, attributes the program’s ranking to its unique teaching methods and course teachers Jack Long and Jamie Matthews. “Our Operations course isn’t just comprised of the lectures you find in many traditional schools. Our students have to run real assembly lines, play simulation games, analyze hundreds of real business cases, and tour plants to observe production processes,” she explains.

Acton Operations teacher Jamie Matthews says, “Anybody can write down a great process design on a piece of paper. The simulations are about ‘How do I make this thing on paper become real and implement it and execute it?’” Thomsen adds, “You’ve got to run a process to see how it actually works. An Acton student leaves with an intuition about processes dynamics, not just a basic understanding.”

Acton alums concur. Ben Allen, a 2006 graduate, adds, “The hands-on operations experience I received at Acton helped me move past the academic theory and into the world of real problem-solving.” Another graduate notes that, “If you want to run a company sooner rather than later, this is the only program I’d consider.”

Robert Franek, vice president and publisher at The Princeton Review, says that the ranking gives “applicants feedback they can’t find elsewhere: what the schools’ own customers think of them.” Clearly, Acton’s customers are satisfied: in addition to this latest high ranking, Acton has also been ranked by The Princeton Review as one of the best MBA programs in the country for “best classroom experience,” “best professors,” and “most competitive students.”


About the Acton School of Business (www.actonmba.org)

The Acton School of Business, located in Austin, Texas, is a one-year MBA in Entrepreneurship program taught by successful, practicing entrepreneurs. The program is based entirely on experiential learning, featuring intensive 90-hour workweeks where students stand in the shoes of an entrepreneur in over 300 case studies, run real assembly lines, and sell products door-to-door. The Princeton Review ranks Acton the #2 “Best Classroom Experience,” #3 “Best Professors” and #3 “Most Competitive Students” in the country.

Press Inquiries Contact Jessica Blanchard, Director of Marketing and Enrollment, Acton School of Business, 512-703-1231 or jblanchard@actonmba.org.

News

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004