Seventeen American universities are among the top 20 higher education institutions across the world with wealthy alumni, according to the Wealth-X University Ultra High Net Worth (UNHW) Alumni Rankings.
Harvard University tops the list with UNHW alumni population of 13,650 and collective wealth $4,769 billion. The list features a total of six Ivy League schools in the top 20 U.S. list of universities
The website used its Wealth-X Database, which contains the curated research and intelligence on the wealthy, in order to estimate the population and wealth of UHNW alumni by alma-mater.
Stanford University ranks second with 5,580 UNHW population whose worth totals $2,899 billion, while the University of Pennsylvania stood third with 5,575 wealthy alumni.
“This reflects the US’s status as the country with the world’s largest UHNW population, the networking effects of its top universities and their attractiveness to students from around the world,” the report says.
California is the only state whose four universities were able to grab a spot among the top 20 universities worldwide. Mostly, private universities were able to dominate the list, while only four public universities were included.
When it comes to the source of UNHW alumni population wealth, nearly 84 percent of them have created their own wealth with the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago showing the highest proportion of self-made people.
The list represents a glaring gender gap in the UNHW population. Boston University ranks top among other institutions with 12 percent of wealthy female alumni followed by Northwestern University and Columbia University who have 11 percent and 10 percent female UNHW population respectively.
“While the majority are self-made, inheritance or a combination of the two tend to be more common as a source of wealth for female UHNW alumni than for their male counterparts. For example, 40% of New York University UHNW women inherited their fortunes (the highest pro- portion in the list), compared with 8% of men,” the report states.
Among the top 20 universities, Oxford and Cambridge represent the UK, while France’s INSEAD appears in 19th place.