As a grad student at Wash U, there's certainly feels like a lot of interaction and connection with the start-up scene here in St Louis, although I've not got involved myself. Just yesterday, there was an elevator pitch competition organized by a different entrepreneurship organization.

These are the kinds of things which aren't measured when graduate programs are evaluated, but are super important for people who don't plan to plough into academia, and maybe even more so for those who do!

There's a definitely a lot of opportunity to get non academic career path advice and experience here. A grad student in my lab did a couple of internships at Google during his PhD, which clearly is not something every program/supervisor would be cool with.