Take a look at the background of the biggest billionaires. What does it take to become a billionaire?
Forbes recently released its annual list of the richest people in the world. The publication noted that there are currently 2,153 billionaires, down 55 from 2018. Of the 250 that made it to the very top, many of the usual suspects, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are right where we left them last year.
Website registry platform UK Domain did some research on the world's richest billionaires to identify some common threads among their backgrounds.
With regard to education, there were 128 colleges that the 250 richest billionaires attended for undergrad. But the most common college degree for the billionaires was a lack of one, 17 people on the list dropped out of school. Following dropping out, most billionaires went to Harvard University (seven people), University of Pennsylvania (six people), Yale University (five people) and Sweden’s Lund University (five people).
The top three degree subjects were engineering at 22 percent, business at 17.6 percent and economics and finance at 17 percent.
And for something a little more whimsical and will not likely to have a ton of bearing on whether you add nine zeros to your bank account, apparently the top five astrological signs were Libra with 27 billionaires, Pisces with 22, and Cancer, Taurus and Leo all with 20 each.
So if you're an Ivy League graduate with an engineering background that was born in late September/early October, perhaps you too can make the billionaire list someday :)
(Nina Zipkins)
