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<p>Hard to argue that he had a “preference” for Penn (or would consider it his “alma mater”) if this is true. (Here’s the source: [Warren</a> Buffett Biography](<a href=“http://beginnersinvest.about.com/cs/warrenbuffett/a/aawarrenbio.htm]Warren”>How Did Warren Buffett Become So Rich?))</p>
<p>If anything, Buffett’s loyalties seem greatest toward Grinnell College, where he was a trustee for more than 40 years.</p>
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<p>You can always look at it that way. If i wanted to be more broad, i could say “less than 60 universities across the world are represented among the world’s most powerful people.”</p>
<p>I get what you’re saying. It’s almost arbitrary that Michigan and Berkeley were omited (although both are represented) from the list due to having just one person represented in the ranking. That might change next year, who knows. Only 6 universities in the world have two people represented. These are St. Petersberg, Yale, UCLA, Duke, Penn, and Columbia. And only 5 have three or more represented.'</p>
<p>Is it simply coincidence? Perhaps. But notice that both of UCLA’s alums went to Anderson. Is that just a coincidence as well?</p>
<p>EDIT: should note that the alum point is also negligible, since Forbes said they ‘attended the same 11 schools,’ it never indicated that they graduated from them.</p>
<p>(1) You have to consider how much of this fortune was inherited (not self-made).</p>
<p>(2) Most wealthy people send their kids to Harvard, Yale, Columbia, etc. </p>
<p>The most interesting wealthy people are the people we probably don’t know or talk about because they are enjoying life, working hard, and not caring who is on the Forbes lists (although I love the lists so am clearly not one of these people).</p>
<p>Do you guys think that this list will significantly change in 20 years? i.e. can we expect to see more public universities up there?</p>
<p>Whether a university can count 0, 1 or 2 alums on this this of 71 is irrelevant. Harvard with 12, Stanford with 7 and MIT with 5 have some bragging rights, the remaining US schools, with 0-2 alums on that list, have little to brag about.</p>
<p>Alexandre, did you look at who some of the people on the list are? I’m not sure I would be “bragging” about a number of them.</p>
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<p>Certainly. Obama won’t be on the list in 4 years. Some other person will. But if next year someone who did their undergraduate work at Occidental gets into the list, they’ll be connected to Obama, who did his undergraduate work there before transferring to Columbia. Another Hopkins grad making the list could connect to Bloomberg, and so on.</p>
<p>Other universities which could find themselves mentioned are U-Nebraska, Michigan, Berkeley, Auburn University, etc. The list, i imagine, is mostly stable, but changes (mainly among politicians) are certainly possible.</p>
<p>“Alexandre, did you look at who some of the people on the list are? I’m not sure I would be “bragging” about a number of them.”</p>
<p>I complete agree Sally. I have already expressed my skepticism about “the list of 71”. I do not think it is possible to select the 71 most powerful or influential people in a single industry in the US, let alone 71 across all segments of society all over the world. But using Forbes’ paper-thin methodology, a university with 0-2 alums should not even be noted. Harvard, Stanford and MIT are the only ones that truly separate themselves from the pack user their methodology.</p>
<p>Anyone who understands probability knows that Alexandre is right. To prove his case, it is easy to go back a few years to the Forbes list and perform the university analysis on the older lists. </p>
<p>The only certainty is that Harvard would be #1. Stanford would be #2 or #3.</p>
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<p>I decided to go back to some older ones and, not surprisingly, they aren’t much different (new people don’t tend to become ‘the world’s most powerful’ in a year</p>
<p>[The</a> World’s Most Powerful People 2010 - Forbes](<a href=“Forbes List Directory”>Forbes List Directory)</p>
<p>[The</a> World’s Most Powerful People 2009 - Forbes.com](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/11/worlds-most-powerful-leadership-power-09-people_land.html]The”>The World's Most Powerful People)</p>
<p>The only major college i noticed that was missing was Sciences Po, which had (at least) three alums in the 2010 ranking (Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Jean-Claude Trichet, and Nicolas Sarkozy) but none in the 2012 one; Hopkins also would have been mentioned as a ‘power factory’ in 2010 with Timothy Geithner and Michael Bloomberg both being listed. Also, Tsinghua might have had 4 alums present in 2010 instead of 3.</p>
<p>Both of UCLA’s listed alums (Fink and Gross) have been present in the 2009, 2010, and 2012 rankings. (I suspect they’re also in the 2011 ranking but haven’t found it yet, and am losing interest on researching this topic.) Duke made its appearance on the list when Cook replaced Jobs (i.e. 2011/12)</p>
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<p>Tsinghua’s consistently done pretty well…</p>
<p>You are using the same source beyphy. My issue is not with the 2012 list, but with the publication. I do not believe that this list is robust. There are easily 200-300 people in the World that are as powerful/influential/important that the majority of the people on Forbes’ list of 71.</p>
<p>I am not going to list the hundreds of people who could easily belong to that list, but being most familiar with France, I will list French citizens who are as influential as Hollande. Many of them attended Ecole Polytechnique or HEC.</p>
<p>Bernard Arnault (Businessman)
Liliane Bettencourt (majority shareholder at L’Oreal)
Jean-Paul Chifflet (CEO of Credit Agricole)
Henri de Castries (CEO of AXA Assurances)
Serge Dassault (Businessman)
Christophe de Margerie (Chairman and CEO of Total)
Carlos Ghosn (Chairman and CEO of Renault-Nissan)
Christine Lagarde (IMF Chief)
Francois Pinault (CEO of PPR)
Henri Proglio (CEO of Electricite de France)
Baudouin Prot (Chairman of BNP Paribas)</p>
<p>I probably left out a couple. England and Germany will each have as many noteworthy people missing from that list. Between those three countries, I am sure 30-40 people could easily have made that list. The US will have as many as France, Germany and UK combined. I have not even listed those from the rest of Europe (Holland, Italy, Russia, Scandinavia, Spain, Turkey) Asia (China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, the UAE), Africa (Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa) or the Americas (Brasil, Canada, Mexico).</p>
<p>And how about entertainers and directors? I would say people like JayZ, Steven Spielberg etc… are also very powerful and influencial. Listing the 71 that “matter the most” is impossible.</p>
<p>Very true. </p>
<p>Bill Gates is world famous and has billions, but his resources are a relative pindrop compared to the wealth any of the big banks control, or the monthly budget of any major country. I’m not saying he doesn’t belong on the list, but there really isnt justification why he should be ranked as high as he does. Bernard Arnault has almost as much money, and the rulers of Saudi Arabia can probably buy Bill Gates out without even breaking a sweat (a few months of oil production).</p>
<p>The only people who are undeniably on the list.
-Barack Obama
-Cameron
-Hollande
-Merkel</p>
<p>That’s all. I deliberately failed to include Xi, Putin, Morsi, King Abdullah, among others. They probably should be on the list, but their governments are just too opaque to be absolutely 100% certain how great their powers actually are. </p>
<p>As symbols, Mandela, Kyu, etc are powerful, but can they really, like Barack Obama, call a war and have an entire military apparatus immediately listen? </p>
<p>Or for the case of the business leaders, can Tim Cook or Zuckerberg really stray that far from their company philosophy? If the definition of power is the ability to create change, certainly Zuckerberg/Cook don’t belong at the top. Their contributions made them famous, but they don’t wield nearly as much power as the political leaders at the present. </p>
<p>Overall, creating such a subjective list, then drawing a diagram showing where they went to college is ridiculous.</p>
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<p>Not really. When you look at their methodolgy, it’s pretty easy to see that many of the people you listed wouldn’t be on the list. Especially because of the fourth factor in their methodology (bolded below)</p>
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<p>[The</a> World’s Most Powerful People - Forbes](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelnoer/2011/11/02/the-worlds-most-powerful-people/]The”>The World's Most Powerful People)</p>
<p>doesn’t sound like ‘paper-thin methodology’ to me.</p>
<p>beyphy, it is paper thin. It is in fact laughable. Like I said, my own list is more legitimate than Forbes’s. Just because the have a methodology does not mean it is correct. The USNWR has a methodoligy, and it is full of holes too.</p>
<p>But like I said, even if Forbes got it right, and there was a magical wand that could separate the 70 most important men + Angela Merkel on Earth from the Human race - 71, I do not see how a university having 1 or 2 alums on that list could possibly brag about having any sort of advantage over the remaining universities that have none. Michigan can claim #20 Larry Page. I don’t see how that makes Michigan superior to Brown, Cal, Caltech, Chicago, Cornell, Northwestern or Princeton.</p>
<p>I am not sure why you are so ardentlty defending this latest absurdity from Forbe. Virtually everybody agrees that it is pathetic.</p>
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<p>I’d be lying if i said i wasn’t promoting this ranking, at least in part, because it presents my alma mater favorably. So i’ll just state that here and move on.</p>
<p>I think I’m mainly just annoyed by the ‘anti-Forbes’ complex that CC seems to be filled with. It’s not really any better or any worse than any of the other rankings i’ve seen, yet CC seems bent on disregarding Forbes’ ranking with ad hominem comments while generally accepted US News and other ‘legitimate’ rankings that are filled with equally flawed methodology.</p>
<p>In their methodology above, i don’t think its exactly true to say that the pope ‘has power’ over all those who follow Catholicism, or that the leader of a country controls its financial resources. One can certainly argue whether that’s stupid or not (and i think that it is) but amounting to just ‘This is Forbes, so i’m going to ignore it’ annoys me.</p>
<p>But i agree that i’m just beating a dead horse here, so i’ll stop.</p>
<p>Having 1 alum represented is a coincidence but having 2 represents a clear trend. I would rather trust the editors of Forbes like beyphy than biased posters on CC.</p>
<p>Not really sure why they didn’t choose Beijing University. Many of the members of the Chinese Communist party went there.</p>
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You’ve missed one important point – Timothy Cook was not on the 2009 and 2010 lists (probably not on the 2011 list too). Without Cook, Duke only had one alum … and as we know, “having 1 alum represented is a coincidence” …</p>
<p>I actually did mention that, in the paragraph directly below it:</p>
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<p>Both of Duke’s alums are likely to stay within the list. Generally, the only big drop-offs are non-wealthy and/or non-active politicians. (Bloomberg’s an example of the former; (Bill) Clinton’s an example of the latter.) Sciences Po is an anomaly. Tsinghua university is probably the most impressive on this list in case of regularly losing and gaining new people (i.e. they lose Hu Jintao but gain Xi Jinping, both Tsinghua graduates.) From the looks of it, it’s like China’s Sciences Po.</p>