Private Equity tycoon David Bonderman went to Harvard. So did Apollo Management’s Leon Black and Hamilton James of Blackstone. It turns out that the ranks of Harvard alumni who are billionaires jumped to 62 this year, up from 54. More than any other American university, reports Forbes.
One billionaire alum, speaking anonymously, claims the school’s system of dividing each year’s classmates into smaller groups of roughly 120 students makes networking easier and leads to closer, more lasting, and therefore more profitable life-long business relationships.
Rounding out the top 10 schools for billionaire graduates were: 2) Stanford, with 28, including Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang and Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page; 3) Columbia University, with 20 billionaire grads, including private equity pioneer Henry Kravis. The University of Chicago has 13 billionaire grads, along with 85 Nobel Prize winners. It placed sixth on the list. Other notables include New York University, tied for 8th place with 10 billionaires and Princeton University, tied for 10th place with 9 billionaires.
The Forbes article does point out that having an Ivy League degree isn’t absolutely necessary for becoming a billionaire. As a matter of fact, out of the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest people, 41 don’t even have a college degree.
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