Lot of smiles here

Austin named one of the happiest cities in America for 2019

Austin has some the happiest residents in the U.S

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Life's still good in Austin, where folks are among the happiest in the country — and they're even happier than last year, a report from WalletHub finds.

The personal finance site reviewed 31 "key indicators of happiness," including income-growth rate, average leisure time spent on a given day, and depression rate in more than 180 cities to determine the happiest places in the U.S.

Austin ranks No. 14 for 2019. That's an improvement from last year, when the Capital City came in at No. 21. Austin ranked eighth in income and employment, 15th in emotional and physical well-being, and 80th in community and environment.

"Location plays a hand in how bright or gloomy our days are," the report says. "For years, researchers have studied the science of happiness and found that its key ingredients include a positive mental state, healthy body, strong social connections, job satisfaction, and financial well-being. However, money can only make you so happy — people who make $75,000 a year won’t get any higher satisfaction from more money."

The Dallas-Fort Worth area has the happiest cities in Texas.

Plano takes the No. 1 spot — making it the happiest place in America — for 2019, and Grand Prairie lands at No. 7. Those are improvements from last year, when Plano came in at No. 5 and Grand Prairie placed at No. 10.

Maybe there's something to the old adage "happy wife, happy life" in Plano, where the separation and divorce rate is the fourth lowest in the country. The three cities with lower rates are Fremont, California (No. 1); Irvine, California (No. 2), and Gilbert, Arizona (No. 3).

Irving (No. 31), Fort Worth (No. 42), Garland (No. 47), Arlington (No. 49), and Dallas (No. 68) are the other DFW cities that made the list.

Meanwhile, other Texas cities fall on the unhappy end of the spectrum, including Brownsville (No. 86), San Antonio (No. 97), Amarillo (No. 98), Houston (No. 106), Laredo (No. 111), Lubbock (No. 124), and Corpus Christi (No. 129). El Paso tied with Arlington at No. 49.

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Top of the class

UT Austin ranks among best U.S. schools for entrepreneurship in 2025

UT Austin, University of Texas at Austin, top Texas schools, best public universities, best colleges

Photo by Alexander Williams on Unsplash

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The University of Texas at Austin has earned two top-10 spots on The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur’s lists of the best graduate and undergraduate schools for entrepreneurship studies for 2025.

UT Austin's McCombs School of Business ranks seventh in the graduate category, and UT ranks second in the undergraduate category.

The school is no stranger to the prestigious national lists. In the 2024 rankings, UT also appeared as No. 2 among undergraduate programs, and No. 6 in the ranking for the best graduate programs.

This year marks the fourth time that the school has landed in the top 5 on the undergraduate side, and the 12th time in 15 years that McCombs has made the top 10 among graduate programs in the annual ranking, UT notes in a news release.

The only other schools in Texas to make either top-10 list for 2025 were Rice University (No. 1 graduate school) and the University of Houston (No. 1 undergraduate program).

Rankings for The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur’s 2025 lists were based on a survey of administrators at nearly 300 schools in the U.S., Canada, and Europe that offer entrepreneurship studies. Among the more than 40 factors used for the rankings were academic programs, faculty credentials, mentorship opportunities, and alumni entrepreneurship ventures.

"If the focus of the MBA program at McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin were to be summed up in one word, it would be 'collaboration,'" reads the 2025 graduate schools report. "Students in more than 20 concentrations uniformly crow over its 'incredibly collaborative culture,' citing the 'supportive culture' as a top reason they ultimately picked the program. As a 'top 20 school,' the 'rigorous academic[s]' and 'focus on clean energy,' 'technology,' and 'entrepreneurship,' are other stand-out elements of the program."

The top 10 schools on the list of 50 best graduate schools for entrepreneurship studies in 2025 are:

1. Rice University
2. University of California-Los Angeles
3. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
4. Washington University in St. Louis
5. Babson College
6. University of Washington
7. University of Texas at Austin
8. University of Virginia
9. Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands
10. University of South Florida

The top 10 schools on the list of 50 best undergraduate schools for entrepreneurship studies in 2025 are:

1. University of Houston
2. University of Texas at Austin
3. Babson College
4. University of Washington
5. Washington University in St. Louis
6. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
7. University of Maryland-College Park
8. Miami University of Ohio
9. Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico
10. Northeastern University

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The story originally was published on our sister site, InnovationMap.

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