The Top School at Producing Billionaires

[coureur]

No big shocker - it's Harvard. Stanford is a distant second:

billionaire-university.html: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance

Excerpt:
"The Cambridge, Mass., school tops our first-ever billionaire college study with an alumni base that features 54 10-figure titans, more than 5% of the world's billionaires. Of those 54 plutocrats, 11 received an undergraduate degree, 41 earned a master's, doctorate or juris doctorate, and two earned two degrees.

Harvard's 10-figure grads include Philip Falcone, who studied economics, John Paulson, who earned his M.B.A. there, and hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, who began trading from his dorm room while an undergrad before creating money management outfit Citadel in 1990.

Bruce Kovner earned a bachelor's degree in government from Harvard. He later dropped out of the Ph.D. program at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, studied harpsichord at Juilliard and drove a New York City taxi, all before founding hedge fund Caxton Associates.

Famous Harvard dropouts include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the world's richest man, and Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, who ranked 321st on the most recent Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans with an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion.

Harvard's hall of billionaires is more than double that of Stanford, which grabbed the second-place spot with 25 10-figure alumni."

[ihs76]

Can you really make a billion dollars completely ethically and honestly, or does one have to make some compromises along the way. I don't know about Warren Buffett but certainly Gates and Walmart clan have thrown their share of elbows.

[Pizzagirl]

Did Mark Zuckerberg drop out? I didn't know that.

[IMHopeful]

There are very few ways to make $1B in your life -- and about the only I can think of is either starting your own company that becomes enormously successful (and maybe you sell or maybe you go public and get rich on the stock) a la Bill Gates. Or you join or invest significantly in a company (or companies) early on and hold the stock while it appreciates exponetially (either as an outsider or as an insider executive, e.g., CEO). And either of those types of success don't come without breaking a few eggs along the way.

[IMHopeful]

Oh, and those are the legit ways . . . . I can think of a few that might land you in jail! Even the above could land you in jail if one got too greedy and played fast and loose with the rules.

[marite]

Mark Zuckerberg had plans to come back and finish his degree but decided to stay with Facebook. Another co-founder, Chris Hughes, did finish his degree (History and Literature), cashed out of Facebook, and went on to help Obama create his supremely successful website.
The Facebooker Who Friended Obama
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/te.../07hughes.html

[shawbridge]

IMHopeful, there are a number of folks in private equity, venture capital and hedge funds who have accumulated $1 billion. It is not necessary to have cut ethical corners in either arena to make $1 billion, although I am sure that some who do. I've met a few whose behavior might suggests corners being cut, there are others whose demeanor in a business setting does not suggest unethical behavior. There are in the lists a number of folks with inherited wealth [It looks like Cornell gets there largely from the Johnson family and Northwestern and U Chicago largely from the Pritzkers. The inheritors may be quite competent but probably got in because of their families and probably wouldn't have made the fortunes the earlier generation did].

[IMHopeful]

Shawbridge -- definitely wasn't suggesting that every billionaire is unethical. Actually know a few and I am convinced they came by their money honestly -- through ingenuity, incredible hard work, and a fair amount of good luck and timing. What I meant by "breaking a few eggs" is that it isn't easy -- you gotta be very tough and pretty single-minded. They have also made some pretty big personal sacrifices to get what they have.

I also know one such person who landed in jail for being too greedy (insider trading), one who should have, but managed to get a deal -- but ruined his life, and one for whom it is too early to tell what the end of the story may be. All lost their way in pursuit of the big, big money and forgot that rules apply to everyone -- even those who fly at very high altitudes. And I am also talking about people who earned their own billions -- not inherited.

[coureur]

Not all the Pritzkers went to Chicago. One of the currently prominent members of that family, Penny Pritzker, went undergrad to Harvard and got her JD/MBA at Stanford and presumably counts on both schools' billionaire list.

[Pizzagirl]

In addition to the Pritzkers (of Hyatt fame), another prominent billionaire-family-clan with ties to both NU and U of Chicago is the Crown family.

Members of the family are on the board of trustees at both NU and U of Chicago. Major buildings on both campuses are named for them (at NU, Rebecca Crown Center and the Henry Crown Sports Pavilion; at U of Chicago, Henry Crown Field House). Lester Crown, who is their patriarch, is an NU grad, but I am quite certain they have had family members at both universities. I don't think Admissions at either place says no to these kinds of people :-)

signed,
considering name change for kids to "Pritzker-Crown"