

A good Samaritan helped him obtain a $1,200 loan to buy a local diner he flipped it for a profit and began amassing a multi-billion dollar fortune.14th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Murdock was homeless and penniless when he returned, sometimes sleeping under a bush in a Detroit park. Others never attended college, including Dole Foods CEO David Murdock, who left high school in the 9th grade and worked at a gas station before being drafted into World War II. Many were dropouts, like Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison and computer whiz Michael Dell.
#Penn state university notable alumni plus
That category includes a couple of billionaires who received only associate’s degrees, including Paychex founder Tom Golisano, plus a small group of American billionaires who were educated outside of the U.S., including investor George Soros (who studied at the London School of Economics). Perhaps the most surprising finding: 108 of the 406 people on The Forbes 400 - more than a quarter of the list - never received a bachelor’s degree at all. Two University of California system schools also have a large number of ten-digit grads: UCLA (with five, including former Univision chairman Jerry Perenchio) and Berkeley (with four, including ex junk bond king Michael Milken). The University of Michigan has six, including Google cofounder Larry Page, while nearby Michigan State has four, including Quicken Loans and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert. A few top public universities also boast numerous billionaire alumni. High-priced private schools aren’t the only path to making The Forbes 400, though. In all 11 members of The Forbes 400 are USC graduates. George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars and Indiana Jones, studied at the university’s School of Cinematic Arts. Both Marc Benioff, who cofounded cloud computing firm Salesforce, and casino and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) magnate Frank Fertitta attended USC. A couple of prominent tech investors also once called the school home: Jim Breyer and Peter Thiel.Īnother California school, the University of Southern California, has asserted itself as billionaire factory as well. The cofounder of messaging titan WhatsApp, Brian Acton, went to Stanford, as did LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman. Snapchat founders Evan Spiegel (who, at age 26, remains the youngest American billionaire) and Bobby Murphy met at the school’s Kappa Sigma frat house.

The university’s proximity to Silicon Valley is apparent: its alumni include a number of tech billionaires. The fourth-biggest billionaire producer is Stanford, the west coast school that educated 13 Forbes 400 members. Other notable Yale graduates include FedEx founder Fred Smith and John and Forrest Mars, whose family’s Mars candy company owns brands like M&M's and Snickers. Last year Schwarzman told Bloomberg a former Harvard admissions dean later wrote him to say it was a mistake not admitting him. He went to Yale instead (though he did end up getting an MBA from Harvard Business School afterwards). Stephen Schwarzman, cofounder of private equity giant Blackstone Group, said his first choice was Harvard - but his application was rejected. Rival school Yale can thank Harvard for one of its most prominent alumni. The university is just as famous for its dropouts as its graduates though, which include Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg and the world’s richest man, Bill Gates. Other Harvard grads include Los Angeles Clippers owner and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, and David Rockefeller, the last-surviving grandson of oil tycoon John D. Harvard boasts one of the nation’s youngest billionaires, 32-year-old Airbnb cofounder Nathan Blecharczyk, who got a computer science degree at the school. Harvard and Yale tie for the second-highest number of alumni on The Forbes 400, with 14 apiece. His son, Donald Trump Jr., and daughters, Ivanka and Tiffany Trump, also attended Penn. He received an economics degree from the university's famed Wharton School in 1968. But school’s most famous grad these days is Donald Trump, who transferred to Penn after two years at Fordham University in the Bronx. Other billionaire Penn alumni include Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, and casino magnate Steve Wynn.
