smartest person: University of Texas
richest person: Texas A&M
Update (just undergraduate):
As I’m sure you can all guess, my goal was to show not winning the college admissions lottery may not be as tragic as some fear. Unexpected results: 1) generally we feel much more comfortable with the word prestige for a college over a person, & 2) many of you hang in some very exalted circles. For a number of years, I haven’t hung anywhere flip-flops and an aloha shirt isn’t appropriate attire. It’s fun to broaden my interaction group through CC. 
Amherst
Arkansas State University
Auburn University
Bennington
Boise State
Boston University
Brandeis.
Bristol University
Brooklyn College
Butler
California Institute of Technology
Cambridge (2)
college drop out
Columbia (3)
Community College
Cornell (5)
Deep Springs College
Duke
Elmira College
George Washington University
Goshen College
Harvard (12)
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
High school dropout (2)
Indiana University.
McGill
Metro State University
Minnesota State University
MIT.
Monmouth University
Morgan State
Moscow State University
Naval Academy.
No college (5)
Northwestern
Notre Dame
Occidental College.
Ohio Dominican College
Ohio State
Ohio University
Oregon State University,
Oxford,
Pacific Lutheran University
Penn (6)
Pitt
Pomona College
Princeton (4)
Queen’s in Canada
SF State
Shaw University.
Slippery Rock State Teachers College
Stanford (2)
Stephen F Austin University
Steubenville
SUNY Plattsburgh
Swarthmore
Texas A&M
Tulane
UC Berkeley (3)
UChicago
UCLA (2)
UConn
UCSB (2)
UCSD
UNC-CH
Union College
Universite Libre de Bruxelles
University of Arkansas
University of Chicago
University of Colorado
University of Dayton
University of Michigan (3)
University of Nebraska
University of New Hampshire,
University of New Mexico
University of North Texas,
University of Puerto Rico,
University of Southampton
University of Texas at Austin (2)
University of Virginia
University of Washington,
University of Western Australia
University of Wisconsin (2)
Upper Iowa University
Ursinus College
USC
Wayne State (3)
Wesleyan (2)
William & Mary
Williams
Yale (8)
Note, however, that of the 120 people named who attended American 4-year colleges, 53 of them (44%) are from the 30 schools that I have as Ivies/equivalents (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1893105-ivy-equivalents-ranking-based-on-alumni-outcomes-take-2-1-p1.html), which in total will have maybe 1% of all college slots in the US.
The Near-Ivies I listed have maybe 1.5% all college slots in the US. They account for 14/120 or 12% of this “most prestigious” list.
The “Other Good Schools” category that I have in my post have another roughly 1.5% of total slots. They account for 8/120 or 7% of this “most prestigious” list.
All other schools have 95% of college slots in the US and make up 37% of this “most prestigious” list.
Contrary to my expectations, the majority of this list actually did attend an Ivy/equivalent or Near-Ivy.
I know the purpose of this thread is to see how many lesser known schools make the list but the most “prestigious” people I know went to Yale. One’s the sitting UN ambassador and the other is on CNN nightly.
Limiting it to my generation in the family:
Smartest and richest: Caltech undergrad, UMich PhD. Worked as an engineering Prof for several years before joining in the founding of what became a successful engineering tech startup over a decade ago. Several women including former GFs of his also recount in addition to his intellectual brilliance that he wouldn’t be out of place on a football team or being cast as a leading man in a Hollywood romantic/action lead. However, he’s really a hardcore academic nerd at heart who’s a workaholic(100+ hour workweeks don’t phase him) and doesn’t suffer fools gladly.
Other cousins I respect highly attended the following colleges for undergrad:
Syracuse, Tufts, UMass Amherst, RPI, URochester, Georgetown, Rutgers, Cornell, Barnard, Vassar, Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, MSU, UW-Madison*, etc.
and the following for grad schools:
Tufts(2 in STEM), Stanford(one in engineering, one for MBA), Ohio State(MBA), Temple(MBA through military service), Berkeley, etc.
Among HS classmates:
One friend who is a full Prof in Math at an elite: Harvard undergrad, NYU PhD(Applied Math from Courant Institute)
Another friend who is a Prof at another elite: Reed undergrad, UPitt PhD(Top 3 in his academic field)
Older classmate who is a politician: UMich undergrad, Cardozo Law JD
One hardcore engineering friend: undergrad and Masters in CS at CMU
Another hardcore engineering friend and salutatorian of my graduating HS class: Undergrad & PhD in EE at MIT. Worked in Europe for several years and is now the founder/head of an engineering firm in the Cambridge, Mass area.
Older neighborhood kid who was kicked out of the same Catholic school i was kicked out of for the same reason in first grade and attended Stuy 8 years before me. USNA -> Submarine service. He turned down a full FA package to MIT because he wanted to increase his chances of getting a slot in the submarine service back when it was competitive to the point there was a strong possibility even someone who graduated at the top of the NROTC class at MIT may be pushed aside for an Annapolis grad who graduated much further down in the graduating class If he’s still in the Navy now, he should be coming up for promotion to Rear or Vice Admiral right about now.
Older HS alum friend/client: Swarthmore undergrad Biology/CS double major.
Another older HS alum: Cornell engineering undergrad. Works as a senior technical executive in a Silicon Alley firm while also an officer in the US Army Reserve.
Some friends:
Cardiology fellow friend I knew in Boston: Harvard undergrad, Harvard MD…felt he had so much free time he also took several Art courses at the nearby Mass College of Art during his time at HMS.
Adjunct Prof friend: Undergrad from a college in Eastern Europe, PhD in a social science field from Columbia U in 2013. Postdoc at Oxford.
One post-college roommate: Tufts undergrad(Biology), Harvard School of Ed Masters
Most brilliant undergrad classmate who is a tenure-track Prof at a respectable/elite college in the Northwest NA: Oberlin graduate at 17 with high honors, UCSD PhD in Poli-Sci.
An older Oberlin classmate who was a double-degree Chem/Viola major: Oberlin undergrad, attending Harvard for Chem PhD last I talked with him several years back.
Client/friend: UWisc-Madison* undergrad, Harvard Law JD.
Prominent personalities:
Avery Brooks actor: Oberlin/Rutgers undergrad, Rutgers grad
H.H. Kung Nationalist Chinese Economics minister during the '30s: Oberlin undergrad(class of 1906), Yale grad in Econ.
- My father even to this day sometimes still asks me why I never applied there as he had great admiration for UW-Madison going back to his childhood in China in the '40s.
“Prestige” is an interesting word. I have a sorority sister who has written some highly acclaimed fiction, but not mass market. I have another who has won a Tony for costume design. Is that “prestigious”? They aren’t known by the masses, but are highly regarded in their fields.
^ Yes. 2 more for Northwestern.
University of Minnesota
Moscow State University, mathematics. Extremely bright scientist, but a total nerd.
Wheaton College. (At least he WAS probably the most prestigious person I knew personally…until his closet life as a pedophile predator was exposed in the past year. It just goes to show that you don’t need to go to an Ivy or even be a good person to gain fame and power.)
Interesting question. I’m going to skip my father’s generation – through him, I know a bunch of Nobel Prize winners. I am going to limit my answers to Americans, though I know quite a number of impressive non-Americans as I think you are trying to tabulate among US colleges/universities. I’ve been fortunate to be connected with some of the world’s best universities so picking out the smartest is tough.
From folks I know professionally or personally, the smartest include:
My undergraduate advisor and definitely one of the smartest people in the world (and was recognized as such by lots of folks): Brown undergrad, Princeton PhD.
Economics Nobel and a bit of a mentor: Berkeley undergrad and Harvard PhD.
Scientist, Princeton and Oxford D. Phil…
Broadest thinker, Harvard undergrad and Harvard PhD.
Most prestigious. Wow, this is a hard one, again because I’ve been fortunate to have brushed up against many very impressive folks. A couple are friends. The others are people I have met:
One is a best-selling author and international mediator. Yale undergrad and Harvard PhD.
Another is the scientist above (Princeton and Oxford).
Finance guy: MIT and UC Berkeley PhD.
Corporate Lawyer and then Public Servant: Princeton and U Texas JD.
Diplomacy: City College/Harvard undergrad, Harvard PhD.
Famous reporter- Wellesley
Two people I know (relatives)…both got their undergrad degrees at CSUFullerton. Both got their grad degrees from USC (paid for by their employers).
Guy I know whose privately owned company just got bought out for $180 million - George Washington U.
Smartest person I know has a MacArthur genius award, an undergraduate degree from Yale and a graduate degree from UC-Berkeley. He also holds a chair at Harvard.
Richest person is a managing partner at some kind of investment fund. He went to Rollins College. His kids went to: Vanderbilt, Rollins College, and Lake Forest College. They work in non-business fields–acting and teaching.
And note: Only 1 of his 3 kids went to an elite school. Rich people send their kids wherever they want to. They don’t need to acquire an elite degree to impress other, unless that’s what the kid wants. PLENTY of rich people send their kids to Party State U or whatever. The kid’s set; why bother studying unless the kid is a natural studier?
Which is what is so funny about the filthy-rich from other countries who are so desperate to get elite degrees here. They haven’t realized - it doesn’t matter at that point.
^ Well, I’d wager that those most desperate to get in to elite schools aren’t filthy rich. Just rich (upper-middle-class by US standards). In other words, a lot like the American upper-middle-class.
PG,
You’re not taking into account differing cultural norms from their societies of origin. In many other societies, it’s not enough to just be filthy-rich if one wants to become part of the influential social elites. One must also demonstrate some higher level intellectual, artistic, literary, or scientific matters or else be dismissed by the rest of the ruling elites as “un/anti-intellectual nouveau riche upstarts”. There’s also a strong historical tradition of admiring/trying to emulate learned intellectuals and being seriously interested in education.
This is one reason why many prominent wealthy families from Western Europe and Asia…including Japan make it a point to groom their kids to attend the most elite undergrad universities in their home countries and then attend an elite US/European university for grad school. Plenty of them populate the graduate schools in elite U campuses…and I’ve gotten to meet a few of them in person including a niece of the current South Korean president and a grandson of a former Japanese PM and member of one of Japan’s prominent political families with some past aristocratic associations.*
It’s very similar to the mentality I’ve read old-school European aristocrats had regarding the up-and-coming bourgeoisie in the 19th/early 20th century and moreso after WWII. While the US had a similar mentality among the “old-money” elite in the 19th and early-mid-20th centuries…unlike in many other societies…the influence of that old elite which had similar expectations of being “more than filthy rich” has practically waned to nothingness in the US by the late 20th century. That’s not the case in many other societies which still maintained their traditional wealthy/aristocratic elites with some strong social/political influences or in the case of Mainland China…a strong desire to recreate a more traditionalistic oriented wealthy elite**.
- They would still be aristocrats if it hadn't been for the postwar 1947 Constitution which mandated a large scale purge of aristocrats of their aristocratic status if they weren't close relatives of the Emperor and the imperial family to a certain degree.
** This is one reason why the fad among many newly created upper/upper-middle class filthy rich and political elites is to use Classical Chinese quotes/passages in business correspondence and even advertising/building billboards that the Chinese Communist government felt the need to order a cessation of this as this level of one-ups-manship was getting too out of hand for their taste. If a similar fad had happened in the US, it’d be like if prominent CEOs/corporations and filthy rich individuals felt compelled to include Classical Greek/Latin/Shakespearean English quotes/passages in business correspondence and even advertising/building billboards to show they have an interest in literary and intellectual matters and that having such an interest is critical in being included within or even being taken seriously by those who are part of the American social/economic elite.
Penn State-Abington
It is odd to describe a person as prestigious.