<p>Over the past year, Yale alumni gave the university a total of $24,000 per student. Yale is at or near the top in this measure pretty much every year.</p>
<p>No dude I am sorry but that award goes to Princeton.</p>
<p>The list cites the amount of money per student, not percentage of alumni who give (which Princeton is head and shoulders above everyone).</p>
<p>I guess it shows less willing percentage of Yale givers but the ones that do, give a ton!</p>
<p>The % of alumni who contribute is meaningless because it is just an indication of the amount of money that the school wants to spend on calling its phone lists or sending out repeat mailings asking for a few bucks. Anyone who gives $1.00 is counted towards the total. A better measure of overall "loyalty" other than who ends up giving a few dollars, besides alumni giving per student (above), would perhaps be a tally of 5th, 10th, 25th, etc. reunion attendance -- but in this measure as well, Yale beats out Princeton and virtually every other university.</p>
<p>posterX, this metric is irredeemably biased by its correlation with the wealth of students coming in. Perhaps (and only perhaps) one can legitimately compare Yale to Princeton and Harvard on the basis of alumni giving per student, but it is unfair to colleges who enroll less wealthy student bodies. Their alumni will be less wealthy on average (since coming from a wealthy family is the best predictor for becoming wealthy oneself) and thus they will give fewer dollars. Unless you can statistically correct this data for wealth of entering students, it is worthless (of course, I think alumni giving rate in general is worthless).</p>
<p>If everyone is going into the same college, their backgrounds become less determinate on their later wealth. Maybe Yale just produces more financially successful alumni.</p>
<p>Either way, Yale is amazing.</p>
<p>True, bmwdan. For example, according to Susan Caminiti's article in FORTUNE, "Where the CEOs went to college", Yale produced 43 Fortune 500 CEOs among its undergraduate alumni, the highest of any college in America. Princeton was the runner up with 32 and Harvard had 25. In per capita terms, Yale was also the leader, followed by Princeton, Washington & Lee, Harvard, and Dartmouth. According to Loren Pope's well-known analysis in his book about colleges, which studied the prominence of alumni across all fields (science, business, government, law, medicine, etc.), Yale has the most successful undergrad alumni of any college in America. So it's no wonder that Yale is a perennial leader in alumni giving.</p>
<p>PosterX's numbers can't possibly be accurate because less than 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs went to Ivy League colleges, ie. the 8 schools combined add up to less than 50. </p>
<p>And Harvard is the leader, not Yale.</p>
<p>Universities with the most Fortune 500 CEO undergraduate alumni:</p>
<p>Harvard (private): 13
University of Wisconsin (public): 13
Stanford (private): 10
Princeton (private): 9
University of Texas (public): 9
Yale (private): 8
University of Missouri-Columbia (public): 6 as of May 2006
University of Washington (public): 6
Cornell (private): 5
Duke (private): 5
Northwestern (private): 5
Ohio State (public): 5
U.S. Naval Academy (public): 5</p>
<p>Moral of the story: All of PosterX's statistics should be viewed with great skepticism.</p>
<p>Actually, you're missing some things. The FORTUNE Magazine article I refer to, by Susan Caminiti, may have studied CEOs over a period of 10-20 years rather than taking one particular snapshot in time, which would be less accurate given the very high turnover rates among CEOs. That may account for the discrepancy. </p>
<p>The studies may also have used slightly different definitions of "Fortune 500 CEOs" - for example, some considering Fortune 500 U.S., Fortune 500 International, and Fortune 500 "Service" CEOs in or out of the totals.</p>
<p>Perhaps you'd care to provide a link, or if that's not possible, copy and paste the text itself?</p>
<p>Or at least say which "10-20 years" you are talking about and which definition of "Fortune 500 CEOs" she's using instead of just speculating?</p>
<p>I've never understood the point of posts such as this one...</p>
<p>I do agree that it matters a lot more how much money alumni are giving per current student than the percentage that give money. The percentage means little bc tons of people give $5 here and there just bc someone solicited them and they feel obligated. $ donated per student accounts for the size of the donation and also doesn't put small or large schools at any particular advantage, and it reflects both how much money graduates make and how much they care about their alma mater. I do often question poster X's posts (although as a loyal eli i admire his spirit!), but i think he's right here.</p>