<p>Hey, does anyone know where the 10 richest American bankers who destroyed the economy went to school?</p>
<p>Does anyone know where the 10 richest Americans who are actively undermining our democracy and working to establish a plutocracy went to school?</p>
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<p>All this shows is that Ivy League and equivalent schools are great for GRAD SCHOOL. 90+% of the Ivy degrees on that list were grad school degrees.</p>
<p>For undergrad, the Ivy League is certainly represented, but is by no means close to dominant or overwhelming.</p>
<p>yeah but people like zuckerberg/gates still GOT INTO harvard. they are NOT IVY rejects. Ivy /top school rejects have every reason to mope</p>
<p>Leave out the heirs and heiresses and these were just smart, hardworking people who went to “Ivy +” schools at some point in their lives to get their ticket punched, and kept going. Most did not start at Ivies or “Ivy +” schools, and many did not find it necessary to stay there when they got there. If you’re being intellectually honest, you really can’t credit the Ivies with their success.</p>
<p>^^agree with terenc and bclintonk. </p>
<p>@choatecolate: both Zuckerberg and Gates were pretty fortunate kids. Zuckerberg is from Westchester County, NY, with successful parents (dentist/psychiatrist). Gates’ father was a prominent Seattle lawyer and his grandfather a bank president. He went to a fancy prep school. It is not as though they had no advantage going in. Just like you had coming from Choate, as (to use your words) a “sheltered boarding school kid”…even though you have now transferred twice and have still not been admitted to an Ivy. Are you moping?</p>
<p>huh? i got into cornell lol…i visited USC and instantly fell in love. the only times i partied at cornell it was like 40 and raining the whole freaking time…</p>
<p>i just dislike people who say “elite educations arnt needed for sucess” and then point to a few EXTREME outliers who DID go to elite schools. why do people even cite zuckerberg? just because he didnt graduate from college doesnt mean he was an ivy reject…he was an exeter bro</p>
<p>Actually, Harvard and his priviledged childhood was very important for Bill Gates. Microsoft’s first product was written on Harvard’s computers at a time when computers were very expensive, PCs didn’t exist, and most universities were carefully doling out just enough CPU time to students to do their class assignments. He also attended a private high school where he had much more access to computers than most people did in those days. He showed up at Harvard with more programming experience already under his belt than a typical CS grad back then.</p>
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<p>probably at schools considered to be bastions of liberalism</p>
<p>e: this debate about ivies is stupid. At the end of the day, the rich folks who didn’t inherit their wealth have one thing in common: having really good ideas at the right place at the right time.</p>
<p>The best undergraduates at flagship universities are as good as students anywhere. I saw this when I taught at a Big Ten school, and I suspect that it still holds true. Just this year, one of Ds friends turned down Stanford for William and Mary, another turned down Stanford for Georgia Tech, and still another turned down MIT for Virginia Tech. These are just the three I remember off the top of my head. </p>
<p>A century ago, Andrew Carnegie conjectured that a large inheritance would reduce a childs incentive to work. There is some empirical support for the Carnegie Conjecture. Specifically, people who received large inheritances were more likely to leave the labor force completely or reduce the number of hours they work. (This was shown by Doug Holtz-Eakin, who later became McCains economic advisor.) Perhaps a child who grew up with everything is less willing to put in 70-hour weeks for years to get a business up and running. </p>
<p>A related phenomenon arises in sports. When a sports team is behind late in a game, it adopts a high-risk strategy. A football team passes more while a basketball team attempts more three-point shots and deliberately fouls the opposition. More often than not, the team that was ahead wins, but there are some stunning come-from-behind victories. Likewise, a person who is behind financially may adopt a high-risk strategy and will sometimes come out ahead.</p>
<p>Warren Buffett attended Wharton and then dropped out after 2 years to finish his degree from Nebraska.</p>
<p>Here are #31-#50 and their undergrad alma maters:</p>
<ol>
<li>George Kaiser, Harvard (inherited wealth)</li>
<li>Len Blavatnik, Moscow State University</li>
<li>Harold Simmons, University of Texas - Austin</li>
<li>Jack Taylor, WUSTL (dropout)</li>
<li>Steve Cohen, Penn</li>
<li>Harold Hamm, no college</li>
<li>Rupert Murdoch, Oxford</li>
<li>James Goodnight, NC State</li>
<li>Philip Anschutz, University of Kansas</li>
<li>Andrew Beal, Baylor (dropout)</li>
<li>Steve Jobs (deceased), Reed (dropout)</li>
<li>Patrick Soon-Shiong, UBC</li>
<li>Samuel Newhouse, no college</li>
<li>Ray Dalio, Long Island University</li>
<li>Edward Johnson, Harvard</li>
<li>Charles Ergen, University of Tennessee</li>
<li>Richard Kinder, University of Missouri</li>
<li>Eli Broad, Michigan State</li>
<li>Leonard Lauder, Penn (inherited wealth)</li>
<li>Pierre Omidyar, Tufts</li>
</ol>
<p>Add up #1 through #50 and I’d say Harvard is well represented with 5 out of 50. Penn with 3 (including one with inherited wealth) and Princeton with 2 make a respectable showing, but so do NYU and the University of Texas with 2 apiece. The two Yales are both inherited wealth. No Columbia, Cornell, Brown, or Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Re list in #22, for undergrad:</p>
<p>5 went to Ivies</p>
<p>6 went to other privates</p>
<p>8 went to state u’s.</p>
<p>Someone who is good at math can calculate the real chances of making it on that list, considering the size of student body. Those public u’s are up to 7 times the size of some of the Ivies on that list (e.g., UTexas has 38,400 undergrads; Princeton has 5,200).</p>
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I know what you mean, but that comment should serve to illustrate the silliness of this discussion. 
</p>
<p>I don’t understand why people have to obsess over this, much less try to draw conclusions based off where these people went to college.</p>
<p>From what I remember, Ellison attended UIUC far longer than he attended Chicago.</p>
<p>So he should be listed under the University of Illinois.</p>
<p>“I don’t understand why people have to obsess over this, much less try to draw conclusions based off where these people went to college.”</p>
<p>Because it breaks down the assumption that you have to attend a prestigious college to be successful in life.</p>
<p>That’s OK. I don’t plan to be a billionaire, just a multimillionaire.</p>
<p>It’s notable how few California schools are on there though.</p>
<p>I don’t think the correlation between rich dad/rich guy is that strong when you’re talking about THIS kind of money. Just because you have a dad who makes 6 figures or more and can afford to send you to an Ivy, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be worth 30 billion dollars like the people on this list. That’s a pretty big gap.</p>
<p>What is the correlation then? Networking. If you take people with competent minds and above-average wealth and put them into a close community and let them network and fall back on each other, the wealth always soars. You can see this in Ivy league schools. You can also see it in diaspora populations like Lebanese and Jews in the U.S. who have semi-closed networking communities and as a result have higher per capita incomes than the general pop. I know quite a few wealthy LDS folks from Utah, again, closed-circuit networking.</p>
<p>It’s very rare for someone who doesn’t have SOME sort of exclusive network they belong to, to just muscle their way into huge wealth. Ivy leagues just happen to be some of the best ‘exclusive networking’ venues where people find like-minded connections.</p>
<p>
I counted 9 public universities:
2. Nebraska
7. London School of Economics
8. City College of New York (dropout)
15. Maryland
15. Michigan
18. Texas
23. Washington State (dropout)
24. Oregon
26. Washington</p>
<p>
What does overall size have to do with this discussion? You are comparing smart kids from each of these institutions. Do you really think that the public U’s have 7 times more smart kids than the Ivies?</p>
<p>For ****s sake. 10 public. </p>
<ol>
<li>Nebraska</li>
<li>UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS </li>
<li>London School of Economics</li>
<li>City College of New York (dropout)</li>
<li>Maryland</li>
<li>Michigan</li>
<li>Texas</li>
<li>Washington State (dropout)</li>
<li>Oregon</li>
<li>Washington</li>
</ol>
<p>
You are right. Ellison only stayed for one term at Chicago.</p>