Princeton ranks seventh in S&P 500 CEOs

Nine Princeton undergraduate alumni are CEOs at Standard and Poor's 500 companies, which places the University seventh in a recent ranking compiled by Bloomberg Businessweek.

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the nine Tigers counted in the list were: Jeff Bezos ’86 (Amazon), David Crane ’81 (NRG Energy), John C. Donahue ’71 (Federated Investors), John Finnegan ’71 (Chubb), Andrea Jung ’77 (Avon Products), James Kennedy ’75 (T. Rowe Price), David King ’77 (Laboratory Corp. of America), John "Larry" Nichols ’64 (Devon Energy), and Eric Schmidt ’76 (Google).

The top five producers of CEOs included four state schools -- California, Missouri, Texas, and Wisconsin -- along with Harvard, which tied for second place with 11. Bloomberg compiled data for 502 CEOs (two S&P 500 companies have co-CEOs). Twelve of the corporate leaders did not complete college degrees, and Bloomberg was unable to obtain information about 10 others.

Of the colleges in the top 10, only Dartmouth (No. 6, 10 CEOs) has a smaller undergraduate enrollment than Princeton. All eight Ivy League institutions have at least three S&P 500 CEOs among their alumni (see chart).