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Want to Be a Billionaire? First, Get a Harvard Degree

Filed under: Wealth

Obviously you don't have to have a degree from Harvard in order to become a billionaire – but it certainly helps. According to Forbes' new ranking of universities with the highest number of billionaire alums, Harvard thrashes the competition with a record 62 billionaire grads to its credit – more than double the total of the #2 ranked school, Stanford. A whopping 62 Harvard grads are worth $1 billion or more this year, up from 54 last year. Yale clocks in at No. 5 on the list of the top 10 with 16 billionaire alums, while Princeton barely makes the cut at all, coming out tied for last place with Cornell with 9. Notable billionaire Harvard grads include New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Citadel founder Kenneth Griffin, Meg Whitman of eBay and David Rockefeller Sr. Worth noting: an Ivy League degree isn't necessarily better, and Forbes points out that on last year's Forbes 400 list, at least 41 billionaires did not have a college degree at all. Check out the full list of the top 10 after the jump:

Tags: billionaire, billionaires, Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell, education, Harvard, Ivy League, Massachusetts, Meg Whitman, Michael Bloomberg, Princeton, Stanford, the rich, universities, University of Pennsylvania, wealth, Yale

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New Guide to Ithaca's Wonderful Waterfalls

by Alison Wellner (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Luxury Travel & Hotels

Ithaca is New York's consummate college town, best known as the home of Cornell University. School's out for summer, which means it's a great time to visit one of the area's other great attractions: the waterfalls, of which there are more than 100 of in the Ithaca area.

The Ithaca Visitors Bureau has just released a free field guide to the city's famous gorges and waterfalls, covering 19 public-access waterfalls near downtown Ithaca. (My favorite since my college days is pictured above -- that's Robert Treman State Park.) Some of these waterfalls are already on your GPS no doubt -- the 215-foot Taughannock Falls -- but some are considered local secrets, like Potter's Falls, located in a wildflower preserve. That's too bad for the locals. But lucky for you.

Tags: cornell, Ithaca, waterfalls

Llenroc Estate, Estate of the Day

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Estates

If a home was rumored to cost $32.5 million to build what should it sell for? The Llenroc Estate, which went on sale in Saratoga County in upstate New York this week is said to have cost that much when it was created by Albert Lawrence in 1992. The castle-like home sits on 12 acres on the Mohawk River. Lawrence, a devoted Cornell alum, modeled his home after the campus center. What is Llenroc? It's Cornell spelled backwards. The five-bedroom home is made from Llenroc stone (the same stone used to create the Llenroc dorm at Cornell). As befits a modern castle there are all sorts of unique details such as Scandanavian marble flooring, hand-painted Portuguese tiles, a dining room with a gilded coffered ceiling and a five-floor glass elevator. Particularly eccentric touches include the sailboat-shaped indoor pool with separate hot tub, a four-story solarium, a mermaid bar with see-through views of the pool and dancing fountains. This home is listed at $12.9 million.

Gallery: Llenroc Estate