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11 Colleges With the Most Billionaire Alumni

Marcio Jose Bastos Silva / Shutterstock.com
Marcio Jose Bastos Silva / Shutterstock.com

You don't necessarily need a college degree to be successful -- Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are among the list of college dropouts that have gone on to become billionaires. But they're more the exception than the rule. In fact, many of the world's billionaires went to the same handful of colleges.

Forbes examined the schools attended by the individuals on its annual World's Billionaire List to determine which colleges produced the most billionaire alumni -- and these are the 11 colleges that boast the most.

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Low Memorial Library at Columbia University in New York City.
Low Memorial Library at Columbia University in New York City.

9. (Tie) Columbia University

  • Number of billionaire alumni: 11

Located in New York City, the Ivy League university’s two wealthiest alumni are Robert Kraft, owner of the NFL’s New England Patriots, and Rocco Commisso, the founder of cable company Mediacom, Forbes reported.

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Princeton University in New Jersey
Princeton University in New Jersey

9. (Tie) Princeton University

  • Number of billionaire alumni: 11

Alumni of the New Jersey-based Ivy League school include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott -- who are worth a combined $230 billion -- and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

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9. (Tie) University of California, Berkeley

  • Number of billionaire alumni: 11

Located in Berkeley, California, this public university's billionaire alumni include DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and Intel co-founder Gordon Moore.

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology college campus designed by Frank Gehry
Massachusetts Institute of Technology college campus designed by Frank Gehry

8. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Number of billionaire alumni: 14

Koch Industries CEO Charles Koch and his brother William Koch both attended this Cambridge, Massachusetts university. Other billionaire alumni include Jim Simons, who founded the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, and Dropbox co-founder and CEO Drew Houston.

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USC
USC

7. University of Southern California

  • Number of billionaire alumni: 15

"Star Wars" creator George Lucas and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff are among the billionaire alumni who attended Los Angeles's University of Southern California.

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Cornell University McGraw Tower in Ithaca New York
Cornell University McGraw Tower in Ithaca New York

6. Cornell University

  • Number of billionaire alumni: 18

Billionaire graduates of this Ivy League school -- located in Ithaca, New York -- include former Citigroup head Sandy Weill, who is the namesake of the university’s medical school, and private equity heavyweight Robert F. Smith, who lends his name to the chemical engineering school.

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Mumbai University Library Building.
Mumbai University Library Building.

5. Mumbai University

  • Number of billionaire alumni: 20

Based in Mumbai, India, Mumbai University is the only non-American school on this ranking. Its billionaire alumni include Uday Kotak, who founded and runs one of India’s largest banks in the private sector.

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Yale University campus
Yale University campus

4. Yale University

  • Number of billionaire alumni: 21

Several billionaire heirs and heiresses attended Yale, including candy heirs John, Valerie and Victoria Mars, and oil heirs Lee, Edward, Robert and Sid Bass. Other billionaire alumni of the New Haven, Connecticut-based Ivy League include Joe Tsai, co-founder of Alibaba and owner of the NBA's Brooklyn Nets, and Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the investment firm Blackstone.

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Palo Alto, CA USA May 20, 2017: University logo at Main Camus of Stanford.
Palo Alto, CA USA May 20, 2017: University logo at Main Camus of Stanford.

2. (Tie) Stanford University

  • Number of billionaire alumni: 28

Stanford has educated a number of super-successful entrepreneurs, including Ernie Garcia, founder and CEO of Carvana; Andy Fang, co-founder of DoorDash; David Velez, founder of Nubank; Baiju Bhatt and Vlad TenevRobinhood, co-founders of Robinhood; and Rich Barton, co-founder and CEO of Zillow.

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University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania

2. (Tie) University of Pennsylvania

  • Number of billionaire alumni: 28

Former President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk are both alumni of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, as is philanthropist and widow of the late Steve Jobs, Laurene Powell Jobs.

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Harvard Business School university
Harvard Business School university

1. Harvard University

  • Number of billionaire alumni: 29

Harvard University has more billionaire alumni than any other school, the Forbes analysis found. Bitcoin billionaires Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer are among the elites that graduated from the Ivy League institution located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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