Famous universities

2. Stanford University

Location: Palo Alto, California, US
Established in 1891, Leland Stanford Junior University – or simply Stanford, as it is much more commonly known – is one of the wealthiest research universities in the world and, given its close proximity to and links with Silicon Valley, one of the most influential. To date, its alumni has amassed 83 Nobel Prizes, 28 Turing Awards (a record) and 270 Olympic medals, as well as produced 17 astronauts and 30 living billionaires.
Companies that have close links with Stanford include Google (which started life as a research project for PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin), Cisco (whose founders Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner were employed by Stanford while developing the company’s hardware), and Hewlett-Packard (whose founders, Bill Hewlett and David Packard, met while at the university). The school has also been responsible for some of the most ground-breaking discoveries in computer science history, as well as produced important research in the natural sciences.

3. Harvard University

Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts, US
The oldest educational institution in the US (the college was founded in 1636), Harvard is a byword for academic excellence and remains one of the most influential universities in the world. Alongside 8 former US Presidents, Harvard has also graduated a world-record 160 Nobel laureates, 14 Turing Award winners and 50 Pulitzer Prize recipients, as well as collectively amassing 10 Academy Awards and 108 Olympic medals. It’s also helped make a lot of people rich, too, with 188 living billionaires among its alumni.
It’s not just its students that set Harvard apart, either. While the school has pioneered numerous educational methods and processes that have been adopted or imitated by thousands of universities across the globe, its wider cultural influence has also been felt elsewhere. Many of the fundamental rule changes in American Football were made at Harvard, for example, while Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg – two former attendees – have revolutionised the technological world.