From the linked article
Where do billionaires go to university? By Sean Coughlan
BBC News education correspondent
29 October 2014
The University of Pennsylvania has produced more than any other institution, followed by Harvard, Yale, the University of Southern California, Princeton, Cornell and Stanford. And the most likely way of making money is by dealing in money, with billionaires mostly making their fortunes through finance, banking and investment.
At most Ivies you cannot major in "business", only "economics". U Penn has an undergraduate business school, Wharton, which may attract aspiring investors. Cornell has a program in Applied Economics and Management. Princeton offers a major in Operations Research and Financial Engineering.
This is interesting to a California native, because you can make an argument about Berkeley and Stanford being quite close to each other in terms of being "elite," though it makes sense that people who get richer would go to Stanford, given Berkeley's reputation as a left-leaning institution. (ETA: Hey! There's Berkeley right underneath Stanford if you read the article and get the full list. All seems right with the world there.)
On the southern end of the state, though neither of these institutions enjoy what would be considered "elite" status, you can't make a very good argument of institutional quality of UCLA versus USC. UCLA enjoys a far better educational reputation, and it's not even close. Furthermore, USC is located in a bad part of Los Angeles, while UCLA is in the tony western part of the city, where most of the city's elites live, so you'd think the wealthy residents would send their kids there. UCLA does not have a left-leaning reputation like Berkeley does. So how on earth are so many wealthy people coming from USC?
Where USC is truly elite, however, is sticker price (hence the common moniker "University of Spoiled Children"). They're an outrageously expensive private college. This is a trait they share, incidentally, with Stanford... and Penn... and rest of the Ivies on the list. Coincidence??
