<p>The following institutions produced the greatest number of people on the Fortune 400 wealthiest Americans list the last year the survey was done:</p>
<li> Harvard </li>
<li> Stanford </li>
<li> U Pennsylvania </li>
<li> Yale </li>
<li> NYU </li>
<li> Columbia </li>
<li> MIT </li>
<li> UCLA</li>
<li> U Michigan </li>
<li>U Texas – Austin </li>
<li>USC </li>
<li>U Chicago </li>
<li>Princeton </li>
<li>Cornell </li>
<li>Northwestern </li>
<li>Dartmouth </li>
<li>UC Berkeley </li>
<li>Duke </li>
<li>U Virginia </li>
<li>U Illinois – Urbana/Champaign </li>
</ol>
<p>This list includes all institutions not just the top colleges and every degree counts towards the tally as does attendance (i.e. dropouts are included, which I can justify if necessary). Notable omissions here in my opinion are Brown and Georgetown, but what is interesting is that they also have very low endowments relative to their peers. They each lay claim to one member of the Fortune 500 list.</p>
<p>I will include this other list I posted awhile back to because I think it is relevant.</p>
<p>Colleges Producing Most "Noteworthy" People
The website NNDB.com has a collection of over 32,000 profiles of people across the world (dead or alive) - celebrities, successful businessmen, inventors, Nobel laureates, powerful politicians, top journalists, authors, athletes, artists, socialites, etc., etc. It basically profiles people who are well-known or have accomplished something of distinction who will be remembered throughout history because of their role in society. It is basically a "who's who" site. It also lists (when the data is available) the educational institution attended by the individual. I decided to do some basic research looking at the top 50 national universities according to U.S. News & World Report to see which institutions produce the largest number of "noteworthy" people. Obviously, size should be taken into account if you would like to truly understand which schools have the strongest track record at producing people that "matter" (no offense) in America and around the world, and these rankings consider all programs offered by the university -- i.e. not just the undergraduate school. </p>
<p>In rank order:</p>
<p>1 Harvard
2 Yale
3 Columbia
4 Stanford
5 Princeton
6 NYU
7 UC Berkeley
8 U Chicago
9 UCLA
10 U Pennsylvania
11 U Michigan
12 USC
13 Cornell
14 Georgetown
15 Northwestern
16 MIT
17 U Virginia
18 Dartmouth
19 U Texas - Austin
20 Brown</p>
<p>When I posted this before someone asked about the U.S. Naval Academy, and I checked and they don't have enough graduates listed on the site to be in the top 20.</p>
<p>The connection between a student's college choice and the likelihood of making it onto the Forbes list is pretty darn close to zero. LOL. </p>
<p>Read the stories of the folks on this list and you see that their place on the list has very little to do with where they went to college. Almost universally, the message is be very talented, very hard-working, have a great, leveragable idea and be extremely lucky. </p>
<p>I'd amend my answer somewhat for grad schools as there is something to be said for leaders of various fields coming with high frequency out of the nation's top business, med, law programs. But even here, the numbers are ridiculously small when you consider how many students annually come out of these places. </p>
<p>Really want to join the Forbes 400? Join the Lucky Sperm Club!</p>
<p>davida1-- are these ranks for undergraduate only, or undergrad and/or grad?</p>
<p>Ranking by number of rich or noteworthy graduates clearly favors large schools over small schools-- obviously no liberal arts colleges are going to make this list.</p>
<p>While I always find these lists fun (especially when there are good surprises, and when they remind you that you can go to UCLA or UT-Austin and do the same things as somebody from Harvard or Yale), they're also not very useful for selecting a college.</p>
<p>Out of curiosity does anyone know how many of these inherited their money vs were made people? I'm not against anyone inheriting their wealth but you don't need a degree from a prestigious school to do that.</p>
<p>WUSTL did not make the list LOL; just because it does whatever it can to increase its stats for US News doesn't mean it has a history of producing the most wealthy or noteworthy Americans.</p>
<p>For people that say it doesn't matter where you went to college blah blah blah...What this data suggests and from other studies I've done on things similar to this is that the same schools end up at the top and while sometimes it correlates with U.S. News Ranking the same schools tend to be overrated (i.e. WUSTL, Caltech, Rice, Vanderbilt, Brandeis, U Rochester, Wake Forest, etc.) even when SIZE is taken into account and the same schools end up on top (all of the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Duke, the top publics like UVA, UCLA, UC Berkeley, U Michigan, Georgetown, Northwestern/U Chicago, etc...). I did a study on feeders to top law, medical, and business schools and you get similar results in terms of what schools are at the top (with the exception of U Texas - Austin, NYU, USC, etc.)...The reality is that people will continue to be mislead and think Carleton is the same as Williams and it's about you as a person or Carnegie Mellon is no different than Georgetown and the reality is that the data DOES NOT support that. Sure it's about you as a person and your own initiative, luck, great ideas, what you look like, who you know, etc., etc. but the same schools tend to produce people at the top and the same schools also FAIL to do so. It doesn't mean you have to go to Harvard to be successful, and obviously there are tons of Harvard grads that end up doing nothing significant and/or are poor. People can ignore the relationship all they want but it's clearly there. I would advise anyone considering colleges to seriously think about these lists. Obviously, there should be many other factors, but to dismiss this out of hand is a huge mistake.</p>
<p>For your information Duke was actually like 21 or 22 on the NNBD list. I don't remember. You can check my other thread. But, for people that keep bringing up size and including LAC's, the reality is that the tallies for schools not in the top 20 seem to be usually significantly lower than the top 20 or so -- so much so that there is no reason really to include them because their numbers are statistically insignificant and tend to be just due to chance while for the schools at the top there are tallies significant enough to be considered seriously. In terms of per capita data, I would consider the per capita data for the top schools but going beyond that can be silly.</p>