<p>I specifically referenced the list in post #22, which excludes the rich-by-inheritance crowd.</p>
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<p>You are right. I have heard of, but am not very familiar with London School of Economics, and for some reason I assumed it was private.</p>
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<p>Well, if the purpose of this discussion is to determine your chances of making it onto that list based upon which college you attend, then wouldn’t you need to take into account the size of the pool from your college you are competing with?</p>
<p>If Princeton has 1 and UTexas has 1, but Princeton is 7 times smaller than UTexas, aren’t the odds of you being the one who makes the list much greater if you attend Princeton than UTexas?</p>
<p>I agree with noimagination that it is a silly analysis, but there is no point in discussing it if you don’t do the math, right?</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”</p>
<p>Actually, I think going to an Ivy league school would be an impediment to becoming a billionaire. </p>
<p>I know two people that went to Harvard, and their parents had planned on sending them to that school since they were in grade school. As a result, I can’t imagine either one of them would have had the ■■■■■■■ to walk away from a Harvard degree like Gates and Zuckerberg did.</p>
<p>Also, I actually grew up with someone that inherited a business that generates revenues in excess of five hundred million dollars each year. His father created this business in his garage in the mid 80s. Had he been like 99.9% of the people that live around us, his dad would have chosen the safety of working for one of the large corporations that is located nearby. He had no exclusive network either - his alma mater was a small midwestern LAC with a relatively small endowment.</p>
<p>I think one’s chances of becoming a multi-billionaire are close to zero whatever college one attends. That said, I think the diversity of the undergrad backgrounds of contemporary multi-billionaires is interesting. With the possible exception of Harvard, Ivies don’t seem to have a systematic advantage here, which tends to debunk some of the common mythology one sees on CC.</p>
<p>I also agree with GoBlue81 that comparing class sizes is kinda dumb. Look, everyone knows the bottom 3/4 of the class at even the top public universities is not cut from the same cloth as the top 3/4 of the class at elite private universities, just by virtue of size; the public universities’ mission includes educating large numbers of people, which inevitably means they’ve got to reach much deeper into the applicant pool than a private school whose mission is to educate just a select handful. But the top 1/4 of the class at the top publics is roughly equivalent in academic talent and achievement–and in size–to the entire class at an elite private university. At many publics that group of top students will be smaller than 1/4 of the class, maybe a fifth, or a sixth, or a tenth. But there will be a pool of extremely bright, talented, and accomplished students at every public flagship. That’s the relevant comparison group. not the entire class. </p>
<p>If it even makes sense to do cross-school comparisons when you’re dealing with such a small-numbers phenomenon, which I very much doubt. Basically, each of these people is an aberration, an outlier, a freak of nature. Every now and then, lightning strikes and someone becomes a mega-billionaire. Sometimes it strikes someone at an Ivy, sometimes it strikes someone at a non-Ivy private college, and sometimes it strikes someone at a public university. But the chances of it happening to you are close to nil wherever you go to college, and to make that the basis for choosing a college–well, that would be just extraordinarily stupid, and probably pretty good prima facie evidence that you have neither the common sense nor the basic numeracy that it’s going to take to amass a vast fortune.</p>
<p>You may say that only a few of these people got undergrads from top schools, but if you look at their percentage here vs. the percentage of top school undergrads out of all college students, the difference would be staggering. These guys were extraordinarily smart. Smart people go to top schools. Obviously top schools are going to have a correlation to the ultra-rich!</p>
<p>Frankly, I’d be more interested to see the correlation between top schools and the top 1%. I’m sure the data would be more accurate and we would see a closer correlation.</p>
<p>True enough. But the natural counterargument is that, let’s face it, most people don’t exactly have a shrewd business sense, and never will. If you’re one of those people, then you’re probably better off with a Harvard degree.</p>
<p>I’m not sure about that - I think it’s fair to say that none of them is thinking of returning to college anymore. But let’s face it - if Microsoft or Facebook had failed miserably, it seems highly likely that Gates/Zuck would have returned to Harvard to finish their degrees.</p>
<p>Indeed, that’s why starting a company for them was a relatively low-risk affair. What do you have to really lose? If the company fails, oh well, you’re simply relegated to a consolation prize of a degree from Harvard. Boo hoo, such epic tragedy, cue the world’s smallest violin.</p>
<p>Some of these guys are old and the colleges they attended are not what they are today - for better or worse. NYU was a joke in the 60’s-80’s, until the city gentrified. City College was a much better school in the past before everyone had to be admitted.</p>
<p>Oh, and btw, I know some of the people on the list and many came from lower income families, living in small apartments in poor neighborhoods - and some of them were friends as kids (talk about early networking!).</p>
<p>The Bill Gates story is quite true - his private prep school gave him computer skills that few kids had the opportunity to develop in college let alone high school.</p>
<p>The error here is supposing that a desire to become extremely wealthy is what drives the desire to attend a good school. Thank God, for most of us it is not.</p>
<p>If anything, Harvard’s good showing among top earners is a testament to their admissions committee’s ability to spot top motivation and talent. In fact, many selective U’s can spot such brilliant and driven standout applicants, but when the admissions packets come in, perhaps the choice of Harvard beats out the others. So, once again, it is less likely that attending Harvard makes the billionaire and more likely that the future billionaire selects Harvard as their (temporary) school of choice… until it’s time to skedaddle and make that billion.</p>