This prestigious Ivy League university is located in picturesque Hanover, New Hampshire. They were originally founded to educate the Native Americans in the English way of life – including Christian theology, though it’s evolved into one of the highest-ranked universities in the country.
There have been several notable alumni to graduate from Dartmouth, including 170 U.S senators and members of The House of Representatives, three Nobel Prize winners, 2 U.S Supreme Court justices and 10 living billionaires. Among the brilliant minds to hail from Dartmouth: Dr. Seuss, Daniel Webster, and Robert Frost.
Rice University: $6.2 Billion
Rice University is a private research school in Houston, Texas. They turn out an impressive level of research and receive over $140 million annually for research expenses. Rice has a fairly small student body, compared to a lot of others on this list, with just over 7,000 in attendance last year.
Rice has close ties to NASA and subsequently has produced a high number of successful astronauts and space scientists. Two Rice alumni have received Nobel Prizes, and a number of them have become the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.
University Of Southern California: $5.5 Billion
The University of Southern California was established in the 1860s and has evolved into one of the best private universities in the country. They have an annual budget of over $5 billion and an endowment of $5.5 billion. USC is known for several major technological inventions, including the Domain Name System, antivirus software and DNA computing, among others.
Multiple Nobel Prize winners have emerged from the university, along with major actors who played in 25 of the highest-grossing films in history. Some of the famous alumni to graduate from USC include Neil Armstrong, Will Ferrell, Judd Apatow, and Forest Whitaker. There have also been more than 130 Olympic medal winners affiliated with the school.
Ohio State University: $5.2 Billion
Ohio State University is a public university in Columbus, Ohio. It was established in 1870 and was originally the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College. The name was switched in 1878, and now has a student body of more than 60,000 each year. U.S News & World Report ranked OSU as the 17th best public school in the United States in 2019.
OSU has their fair share of notable alumni, including multiple Nobel and Pulitzer Prize recipients. There have also been numerous Olympic gold medalists, not to mention all of the silver and bronze winners, to come from the university.
Vanderbilt University: $6.4 Billion
Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, was founded in the 1870s. It was named for a shipping and railroad mogul who gave the school its original endowment of $1 million. Today, that million has become nearly $6.5 billion and it continues to grow. The school caters to over 13,000 students each year, with a faculty of just over 1,800.
45 former and current members of the U.S Congress, 10 billionaires, 14 U.S Ambassadors, and 17 governors, among other notable titles, have graduated from Vanderbilt over the years. Not to mention the Pulitzer Prize, Grammy, and Academy Award winners.