A Web site designed by students at the Owen Graduate School hopes to help students plan spring break and other road trips.

According to the graduate students who created it, My College Road Trip offers a unique perspective because college students write the material with other college students in mind.

"The best thing is that it narrows down the mass amount of information about cities or things to do in a particular destination to the things that college students care the most about," said Virginia Francis, Owen graduate student and vice president of brand management at MCRT.

Andrew Bouldin, founder and CEO of MCRT, said he came up with the idea of the Web site while he was driving home from a weekend road trip.

"I realized that there was no way to find out the coolest things for college students to do around my college on any given weekend," Bouldin said. Once he got home, he said he began to search the Internet for quality travel information aimed at college students and could find nothing. All information on potential vacation destinations was written by parents and businessmen, he said. Bouldin found a group of fellow students who shared his irritation and MCRT was born.

Many Vanderbilt students contribute to the running of this online business. Involved are not only the Owen graduate students who launched the Web site, but also undergraduate students in Associate Professor of Managerial Studies Cherrie Clark's Advanced Marketing class.

"They are implementing a viral marketing project to promote the site," Francis said. "They are using online tools such as Facebook and blogs to promote the site to college students around the country."

Owen graduate students involved in the project will be able to use their experience in forming an online business toward their business degrees. This spring the students will all be doing independent study for the business so they can receive school credit for the work they put in.

MCRT is just one of the many businesses founded by Owen students while they are still enrolled in graduate school.

"The culture of the program at Owen is just wonderful," said Jim Bradford, dean of the Owen Graduate School of Management. "So many students run their own businesses while here at Owen. Just yesterday, I went to the screening of one of our student's films, which will premiere in New York in the next few weeks."

Bradford credits Owen's significant jump in the Financial Times' Business School rankings to the students' eagerness to start their own businesses.

The Owen Graduate School of Management jumped 20 places in the world rankings of the Financial Times and is now ranked the 56th best business school in the world. It also jumped 15 spots in the U.S. business school rankings of the Financial Times' and is now ranked as the 28th-best business school in the U.S.