billionaire
Harvard tops the charts. Source: Jonathan Francisca/Unsplash

We’ve all dreamed about it once or twice (or every other day): being a billionaire would be pretty cushty. But, alas, you have to do a tiny, itty little bit of work to get there.

So, just where did the world’s billionaires go to college?

According to the Wealth-X Billionaire Census 2018, billionaires tend to have studied at the most prestigious universities in the US, and Harvard has more billionaire graduates than Yale, Stanford and MIT put together!

CNBC reported Harvard grads make up 6.8 percent of the total global billionaire population.

Want to make the big bucks? Looks like your best bet is Harvard. Source: Giphy

Stanford scoops up second position, but the university has less than half the number of billionaire graduates as Harvard.

Although, “the average net worth of Stanford’s billionaire population is the highest,” the Wealth-X report said.

Stanford “owes” this success “much to its location in the heart of Silicon Valley and its close integration with the global tech giants,” the report claims.

Here’s the list of the top 10 colleges billionaires graduates from…

Ranking University Number of billionaire graduates
1 Harvard University 188
2 Stanford University 74
3 University of Pennsylvania 64
4 Columbia University 53
5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 38
6 Cornell University 35
7 Yale University 31
=8 University of Southern California 29
=8 University of Chicago 29
10 University of Michigan 26

University of California, Berkeley just misses the mark with 25 billionaires, after Michigan’s 26.

Ivy League institutions dominate the rankings, with five out of the top seven being part of the prestigious group.

“The social elitism, prestige and fast-track career progression often associated with a private Ivy League education undoubtedly provides a springboard towards wealth creation and for some high achievers to attain billionaire status,” the report concludes.

Although, it is significant that a high percentage of students who attend Ivy League schools come from wealthy families. Fifteen percent of students who attend Harvard and 17 percent of those who attend Stanford come from the top one percent of family income brackets, according to the New York Times.

The rankings include students with undergraduate or postgraduate degrees from the institutions – although, as it turns out, you don’t need an MBA to be a billionaire businessperson.

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