The Wall Street Journal reported that at Babson, “the emphasis on hands-on experience begins as soon as students step on campus as freshmen.”

For first-year students at Babson University, it is mandatory to take the Fundamentals of Management and Entrepreneurship course. In this course, student teams receive a loan of up to $3,000 to launch their own startup.

“It’s not a simulation,” Ethan Ide, a junior at Babson, told WSJ. “You work with international suppliers, have a website and sell to people all over the world. To get that hands-on experience from day one was kind of crazy.”

To calculate the rankings, the Wall Street Journal worked with College Pulse, an online polling and analytics company founded by two Dartmouth College graduates, and consulted with data scientists at Statista.

The ranking results were based on the following components, each with different weightings: academic outcomes (impact on salary, years to payback on net price, graduation rate), learning environment (learning opportunities, career preparation, learning facilities, the extent to which students would recommend their college, and character), and diversity (opportunities for interacting with students from different backgrounds, ethnic diversity, inclusion of students with disabilities and lower family income).

Here are the rankings of the top 20 colleges and universities in Massachusetts. The top 20 in the country overall are also listed below.

The 20 Best Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts

2. Babson College

6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

7. Harvard University

11. Bentley University

65. College of the Holy Cross

86. Wellesley College

90. Worcester Polytechnic Institute

100. Boston College

120. Amherst College

168. Northeastern University

171. Boston University

172. Wentworth Institute of Technology

173. Stonehill College

174. Williams College

205. Simmons University

246. Suffolk University

281. University of Massachusetts Amherst

282. Tufts University

313. University of Massachusetts Lowell

331. University of Massachusetts Boston

The 20 best colleges and universities in the USA

1. Princeton University

2. Babson College

3. Stanford University

4. Yale University

5. Claremont McKenna College

6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

7. Harvard University

8. University of California, Berkeley

9. Georgia Institute of Technology, Main Campus

10. Davidson College

11. Bentley University

12. University of California, Davis

13. University of Pennsylvania

14. Columbia University

15. Lehigh University

16. State University of San José

17. University of Notre Dame

18. University of California, Merced

19. Virginia Tech

20. Harvey Mudd College

You can reach Emily Sweeney at [email protected]. Follow her @emilysweeney and on Instagram @emilysweeney22.