9 universities with the most billionaires: MIT, Yale, UPenn

Bill Gates. Elon Musk. Jeff Bezos.Billionaires who built global empires and changed industries.

And these billionaires had to start somewhere. And for many of them, university was fertile ground to begin their illustrious, ambitious careers. Arguably, though, some universities may be better than others when it comes to producing brilliant moguls. Which ones? Quantitatively, we can try to find out by looking at the universities with the most billionaires.

Table of contents:

But some of the richest men in the world have famously dropped out of school. Look at Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who has a net worth of over US$108 billion as of 2026.

Before you cite him as an example of why you should drop out of school, know this: Gates dropped out of Harvard University, one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

It’s a difficult university to get into; the class of 2028 will have better luck than their seniors, with the highest acceptance rate the university has seen in four years at 3.59%. Meanwhile, the class of 2027 has a rate of 3.41%, and the class of 2026 is at a record low of 3.19%.

Another famous dropout would be Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook. He founded the social networking website right from his college dorm room at Harvard University, choosing to then drop out in his sophomore year.

Now, Facebook – known as Meta Platforms in 2026 – is valued at a staggering US$1.53 trillion. Zuckerberg himself holds a net worth of US$222 billion.

Some billionaires who didn’t complete or even step foot into university or college:

So what does this tell us? Perhaps the traditional academic journey is not the only pathway to being a billionaire.

Jack Ma, one of the richest men in China and the co-founder of Alibaba Group, said, “It is not necessary to study for an MBA. Most MBA graduates are not useful… Unless they come back from their MBA studies and forget what they’ve learned at school, then they will be useful. Because schools teach knowledge, while starting businesses requires wisdom. Wisdom is acquired through experience. Knowledge can be acquired through hard work.”

Leonard Lauder earned his undergraduate degree at Wharton, and got an MBA at Columbia University. Source: Estee Lauder Companies

Perhaps it can be said that education is still a necessary stepping stone. It will teach you the fundamentals of the great work you do that gets you paid.

But there is some truth that what actually earns you more money in the long run is experience and a desire to learn beyond the bounds of traditional educational institutions. After all, practical intelligence and upskilling will undoubtedly get you further in life.

Wondering which universities provided great bases for these billionaires to earn their wealth? Take a look below.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

QS World University Rankings 2026: #1

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is not only the #1 university in the world, but it also stands out as one of the universities with the most billionaires

With over 38 billionaire alumni, big names include:

• Charles Koch, co-CEO and chairman of Koch Industries
• Drew Houston, co-founder and CEO of Dropbox
• Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of FTX

DoorDash is the largest food delivery platform in the US, with a whopping 56% market share.

Stanford University

QS World University Rankings 2026: #3

Stanford University, known as California’s Silicon Valley school, has produced over 94 billionaires since its inception, easily making it one of the universities with the most billionaires.

Tech billionaires in particular are a dime a dozen. They include:

• DoorDash co-founders Andy Fang and Stanley Tang
• Snapchat co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy
• Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!

Harvard University

QS World University Rankings 2026: #5

Harvard University’s reputation precedes it. Due to its academic excellence, Harvard has produced many top tycoons, remaining strongly connected to some of America’s richest individuals. Over 114 billionaires have attended Harvard, and even more millionaires are following suit.

Harvard Business School’s business education section has produced very rich, intelligent alumni, including six US president. Some billionaires are:

• Citadel’s Ken Griffin
• Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk
• Michael Bloomberg

And, of course, other than famous and rich graduates, there are also famous and rich dropouts.

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg were Harvard alumni, even if they technically didn’t finish their education there. However, they clearly did not forget their roots — Zuckerberg and his wife, whom he met during his time at Harvard, pledged US$519 million to the university to launch and operate theKempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence, named after Zuckerberg’s mother.

FedEx’s commercial impact is so big that people tend to say, “I’ll FedEx it”.

University of Pennsylvania

QS World University Rankings 2026: #15

Famously known as America’s first university, theUniversity of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a private, Ivy League research institution in Philadelphia. It is home to four schools, with its business unit, Wharton School. The university is famous for producing numerous billionaires — 56, to be exact.

Top graduates include:

• Tesla’s Elon Musk
• Donald Trump
• Apollo co-founders Marc Rowan and Josh Harris
• Leonard Lauder, William Lauder, Aerin Lauder, and Ronald Lauder — heirs to the Estée Lauder fortune

Of course, business is not the only thriving school.

Tory Burch, American businesswoman and fashion designer, obtained her art history degree from Penn, while film producer Dick Wolf pursued an English degree.

Cornell University

QS World University Rankings 2026: #16

Cornell University has produced 24 billionaires, some of whom are the top executives and entrepreneurs in both the technology and business industries. In fact, its business school was named after the founder of S. C. Johnson & Son, who donatedUS$20 million in 1984 to support the graduate school’s establishment.

The school went on to produce numerous billionaires, such as:

• PeopleSoft and Workday founder David Duffield
• Sequoia Capital partner Douglas Leone
• Sanford “Sandy” Weill, the former CEO and Chairman of Citigroup

One online study estimated Jeff Bezos makes US$59,000 per minute.

Yale University

QS World University Rankings 2025: #21

Yale University has churned out many incredible entrepreneurs and nearly 25 billionaires to date, making it one of the universities with the most billionaires.

The idea of FedEx started right in its classrooms, with its founder, Fred Smith, creating the basis for the transportation, e-commerce, and business services company for an economics paper.

Other notable billionaire Yale alumni include:

• Pinterest co-founders Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra
• The Bass family oil tycoons
• Blackstone chairman and CEO Stephen Schwarzman

Princeton University

QS World University Rankings 2026: #25

The alma mater of perhaps the world’s richest man, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos himself. Princeton University is home to 12 billionaires, although it can be said that Bezos’s fortune outweighs them all.

In fact, Bezos and his billionaire ex-wife Mackenzie Scott are both Princeton graduates. They only met after graduating and working at hedge fund D.E. Shaw, but together, they made an extremely powerful, rich couple.

Billionaires from Princeton include:

• Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon
• Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman
• Cerberus Capital CEO Stephen Feinberg
• Crypto investment firm Galaxy Digital founder Michael Novogratz
• Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Columbia University

QS World University Rankings 2026: #38

Of course, this Ivy League school is one of the universities with the most billionaires. This private research university in New York is known for quite a number of alumni. Billionaires it has produced includes:

• Legendary investor Warren Buffett
• Leon Cooperman, chairman and CEO of Omega Advisors
• Robert Kraft, Founder and Chairman of the Kraft Group
• Len Blavatnik, Founder of Access Industries

University of Maryland

QS World University Rankings 2026: #207

This one might seem a little surprising. The University of Maryland, College Park is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland, United States, near Washington, D.C.

Indeed, this university is one of the universities with the most billionaires, a factor that has helped the institution rank among the top universities globally for per capita alumni wealth.

Sergey Brin is one of the University of Maryland’s most famous billionaire alumni. He graduated in 1993 with a degree in mathematics and computer science, then co-founded Google.

Other billionaire alumni include:

• Brendan Iribe, the co-founder of Oculus VR and Scaleform
• Kevin Plank, The founder and former CEO of Under Armour

So, do you need a degree to be a billionaire?

Well, not really. But it’s not that simple.

Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard. Mark Zuckerberg did too. Richard Branson never went to university.

These are the stories that fuel countless “why I quit school” YouTube videos — and technically, they’re all true.

But they’re also outliers in a very specific way. As mentioned, Gates and Zuckerberg didn’t just drop out of any university — they dropped out of Harvard. The networks, the credibility, and the exposure they gained before leaving still shaped what came next.

For most billionaires, a degree was very much part of the journey. Jeff Bezos graduated from Princeton. Elon Musk holds degrees from UPenn in economics and physics. Warren Buffett earned his master’s from Columbia.

The data shows that the majority of the world’s wealthiest individuals did complete higher education. But just because you study at the universities with the most billionaires, doesn’t mean you willbe a billionaire.

What a degree offers isn’t a guaranteed path to wealth. It’s more about the foundation of knowledge, exposure to ambitious peers, and the kind of early credibility that opens doors.

What do billionaires study?

We now know the universities with the most billionaires. But what did they study?

If there’s a billionaire syllabus, it leans heavily on three subjects: business, technology, and economics.

Business and commerce degrees are the most common thread, particularly MBAs from schools like Harvard Business School and Wharton at UPenn.

Engineering and computer science follow closely behind, especially among tech billionaires. Stanford’s outsized presence on the list — 94 billionaires and counting — is largely tied to its proximity to Silicon Valley and its strength in technical disciplines.

Economics is another recurring major, perhaps because it trains people to think about systems, incentives, and markets — the exact lens through which many successful founders and investors view the world.

There are outliers, of course. Tory Burch studied art history at Penn. FedEx founder Fred Smith’s famous logistics idea was sketched out in a Yale economics paper that reportedly received a mediocre grade. The subject matters less than most people assume. What seems to matter more is curiosity, a tolerance for risk, and the willingness to take what you learned and do something genuinely new with it.

Disclaimer: This article was last updated on June 9, 2026.