Best Alma Maters for Billionaires

If you didn't graduate from Harvard, good luck getting a top job

(NEWSER) - If you’re determined to get a great job, you might want to quit your course of study at Cornell or Dartmouth and transfer to one of the "top 5" schools: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and Wharton. A new study shows that recruiters for the best law firms, investment banks, and consultancy firms are only looking at graduates of those schools, Business Insider reports. And even if you’re one of those elite grads, recruiters want to make sure you’re not—in their words—"boring," a "tool," or a "bookworm." More»

These schools offer a good return on investment

(NEWSER) - Which colleges pay off? PayScale crunched the numbers to compute the best returns on investment—by comparing the cost of a degree against what its students earn upon graduation—and Huffington Post rounds up the best of the bunch:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: annual ROI: 12.6%; 30-year ROI: $1.69 million
2. California Institute of Technology: 12.6%; $1.64 million
3. Harvard: 12.5%; $1.63 million
4. Harvey Mudd College: 12.5%; $1.63 million
5. Dartmouth: 12.4%; $1.59 million

(NEWSER) - Harvard and Yale remain the richest schools in the US, but both are getting a lesson in economics. The endowments of the Ivy Leaguer shrank by about 30% over the last year thanks to risky investments, reports Bloomberg. Harvard's fell $11 billion to $26 billion and Yale's dropped $7 billion to $16 billion. Both had moved aggressively into private equity and hedge funds over the past decade, and are now retooling strategies. More»

(NEWSER) - The Ivy League has a reputation for excellence in all things, but the consignment of its sports programs—particularly the more visible ones like football and basketball—to college athletics’ second tier has alumni clamoring for change, the Wall Street Journal reports. Academic standards limit the pool of top student-athletes for the eight Ivy schools; the football teams can’t play in the postseason, nixing their title chances. More»

Top schools see no application shortage despite economy

(NEWSER) - Sure, a lot of people are cash-strapped, but don’t get your hopes up that the recession will boost your shot at an Ivy League school. Harvard got a record number of applications this year—29,112, a 6% jump from last year. And pricey universities like Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia, and Stanford all saw application numbers soar, the New York Times reports. Still, some top smaller schools did see a decline in applications. More»