Those aspiring to be the next Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates would be better off sticking to their studies instead of following the example of the entrepreneurial elite and dropping out of college, according to data on MBA graduate company founders.

A Financial Times survey of the world’s top 100 business schools for this year’s MBA rankings found that 22 per cent of the 7,800 students interviewed had launched a start-up since graduation and 84 per cent of those were still operating three years later.

This is a significantly better survival rate than among start-ups in general, even for those created in countries with the most developed entrepreneurial support infrastructures, in terms of investors, mentoring support and state assistance. In the US, for instance, barely 60 per cent of new businesses make it to their third birthday, according to the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.