Personal Finance

Want to be a billionaire? Where the nation's wealthiest went to school

Key Points
  • One in 8 billionaires on this year's Forbes 400 ranking were college drop-outs.
  • Of those who did graduate, the majority had degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, followed by Yale.
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Want to join the ranks of the nation's wealthiest people? It may help to know where they started out.

More billionaires on this year's Forbes 400 ranking graduated from the University of Pennsylvania than any other college, followed by Yale and Stanford.

And while many majored in economics and finance, as you might expect, politics, history, English and philosophy were also among the most popular areas of study in this elite group, which requires a minimum net worth of at least $2.1 billion to join.

To land at the top of the list is a different story. Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos — the richest person on the planet — graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University, often considered the country's top college, with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering.

Of course, college isn't always the predictor of success.

It's widely known that Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates dropped out to pursue their own companies. So did 1 in 8 billionaires on the Forbes list.

Of the 362 super-rich people that had publicly available information on their education, 44 — or 12 percent — were dropouts, according to an analysis by U.K.-based job site Adview.

Jeff Bezos: The $100 billion dollar man
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Jeff Bezos: The $100 billion dollar man