I cross-registered for a class at Olin (featured in the article) which turned out to one of the top 3 classes I took in college. We inherited the designs for a

I cross-registered for a class at Olin (featured in the article) which turned out to one of the top 3 classes I took in college. We inherited the designs for a portable vegetable grater from 6 previous semesters of work, and iterated further upon its design. We then produced 4 prototype graters and went to Ghana to sell them to rural Cassava farming women who generally have to grate the cassava by hand or use dirty, broken communal graters. We worked closely with the local university and metal shop. By the end of the semester we were ready to hand off plans to get a batch of 10 graters produced on the next trip, and with further plans to get a pilot of 50 produced in Ghana in tandem with Ghanaian engineers and metalsmiths, and had plans to set up an unorthodox supply and distribution chain once the successive groups had secured grant funding. I wouldn't discount the value imparted by a class that throws you into a project with smart people with strong personalities and tells you to figure things out in 3 months before putting your product in front of paying customers. Also, this type of "hands-on" class is generally a capstone that comes after the basic engineering classes that all of the Olin students take freshman and sophomore year. Our professor was a brilliant guy and could have easily just focused on research and churned out great results, but he found it much more fulfilling to be hands on with our project and to guide us through the actual gritty process of creating a product and a business.