Universities That Produce Fortune 500 CEOs

If your goal is to become the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a Fortune 500 company, you may be wondering exactly where you should go to college.  The truth is there are many options.

U.S. News & World Report recently looked into the educational backgrounds of the top CEOs following the release of Fortune 500’s list of companies with the highest revenue.  It turns out that there’s a great deal of diversity.  In fact, none of the CEOs among the top 10 companies on the Fortune 500 list attended the same college.  The President and CEO of Walmart, C. Douglas McMillon, earned his bachelors degree from the University of Arkansas, while Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO, Warren Buffett, graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  Six of the other top executives also graduated from public universities, while one graduated from a school outside the U.S. and one, Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, graduated from an Ivy League University – Princeton.

Those at the helm of the top 100 companies likewise earned their bachelors degrees from a wide range of universities.  Texas A&M graduated four of these CEOs, while the University of Michigan and Pennsylvania State University each graduated three.  Schools that graduated two of the current top 100 CEOs are Dartmouth College, Duke University, Harvard University, Illinois State University, Michigan State University, Princeton University, Purdue University, Stanford University, University of Kentucky and University of Pennsylvania.

If the list is expanded to include the CEO’s of the top 500 companies, Money reports that there are ten universities with the highest representation based on undergraduate degrees.  Kudos go to Harvard, Cornell, Pennsylvania State University, Texas A&M, the United States Military Academy, University of Notre Dame, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Princeton, Stanford, and Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Common majors for these business tycoons include business administration, accounting, economics, and various fields of engineering, science, technology and math. 

It seems that there truly are many potential paths to success.

Susan Alaimo is the founder of SAT Smart. For the past 25 years, SAT Smart’s Ivy League educated tutors have prepared students for the PSAT, SAT, ACT, Subject Tests, AP courses, and all high school subjects. Visit www.SATsmart.com or call 908-369-5362.