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Aspiring tycoons might want to consider making the grade at Harvard University, alma mater to 52 billionaires, according to the Wealth-X global list of universities. Two of the most well-known billionaires who are not counted among the 52 -- Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg -- attended but did not graduate.
Harvard's impressive roster of billionaires is nearly twice as high as the second on the list, University of Pennsylvania, with 28 graduates who became billionaires. Of the graduates from Harvard, 74 percent built their own fortune instead of inheriting wealth.
Stanford ranks third on the list, with 27 billionaire alumni, followed by New York University with 17. Columbia University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology both claim 15 billionaires in their alumni ranks. Yale University, with 13, came in ninth on the list.
The top nine schools on the list are all in the United States. University of Cambridge, with 11 billionaire alumni, is in the United Kingdom and ranked No. 10 on the list.
The president of Wealth-X, David Friedman, attributes Harvard's success to alumni networking and recruiting efforts. "Harvard has this entrenched, powerful network that extends across so many sectors and is incredibly proactive about connecting its alumni," he told CNBC. "You get a great education, but you also get access."
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