New rankings from The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine rated Washington University’s programs for educating entrepreneurs the sixth best in the nation.

The Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies reaches 709 undergraduate students and 220 graduate students. It hosts events such as the Olin Cup Competition and the YouthBridge Social Enterprise & Innovation Competition (SEIC), which invest thousands of dollars in startup and mission-based businesses every year.

According to Ken Harrington, managing director of the Skandalaris Center, the center is different from many programs across the nation, as it is not part of the University’s business school.

“We can pull students together from all areas of the University,” Harrington said. “That results in a lot of good ideas and learning.”

Harrington attributed the center’s recent ascent in rankings to its multidisciplinary focus. Only 35 percent of students participating in the Skandalaris Center’s programs are from the business school.

“We focus more on the spawning of ideas and providing the curriculum to develop their entrepreneurial skills,” Harrington said. “A lot of schools focus on the venture and business, but what we do is focus on the ideas and people. It is really surprising to see how many come from other schools.”

In addition to its events during the academic year, the Skandalaris Center funds summer internships at startup ventures for 25 students.

The center also holds “Coffee with the Experts” to allow current students to have one-on-one meetings with experts in the entrepreneurial field. Another program offered through the center is IdeaBounce, through which anyone can submit ideas for businesses or inventions and pitch them to a panel consisting of community partners, including venture capital firms, incubators and other local entrepreneurs, according to the Skandalaris Center’s website.

“We have really focused on entrepreneurship as something that relates to all the schools and all the disciplines,” Harrington said.

Harrington said he believes that the Skandalaris Center’s lack of affiliation with the business school, as well as its encouragement of students’ ideas and passions—rather than just the business aspect of entrepreneurship—has provided students with a forum to express what they want to see improved in the world.

Each school in the University serves as a base for a different type of entrepreneurship; most notably, the George Warren Brown School of Social Work specializes in social ventures, while the John M. Olin School of Business specializes in commercial ventures.

“It suits the University’s mission of putting the faculty and students first at Wash. U.,” Harrington said.