If you ask how many billionaire alumni does Harvard have, the answer is a whole lot; there seems to be something about Harvard that attracts a lot of money, and take note, even the college dropouts are no exemption. Looking at the list of the colleges where students are most likely to become the richest, Harvard would be at the top of the list, and if you ask any business expert, they will say that it all begins with developing a strong network. According to Business Insider, Harvard is an ideal example of the so-called "network effect" at work.
As of today, 35 out of 500 wealthiest people in the world came from Harvard, and even if you combine the billionaires from other countries like Spain and Saudi Arabia, the ones from Harvard still outnumber them.
If you compute for the total net worth of the top 35 Harvard billionaires, it would sum up to $309 billion. Wealthy alumni include Jamie Dimon, CEO JPMorgan Chase, who regularly appears in TIME magazine's 100 most influential people list and has a net worth of $400million; academy award-winning actress Natalie Portman, who is worth $32million, George W Bush, worth an estimated $35million and Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft who is worth $66billion, according to the Daily Mail.
Harvard maybe a domain of rich kids who mostly inherit their wealth but the fact remains that the school has the highest percentage of self-made billionaires; in fact 74 percent of them.
Indeed, American colleges and universities are home to the largest and richest alumni population and that is because these institutions still serve as filtering mechanisms that only accept students that are smart and well connected. These track records may or may not be the same many years from now because of the exclusivity, but as of the moment Harvard remains to be on top of the list.
