The Best Colleges for Future Leaders 2025

Methodology: How TIME and Statista Determined the Best Companies and Colleges for Future Leaders of 2025

Most Americans understand that graduates of the country’s most elite universities often go on to become top leaders of the country. But the public still greatly underestimates the extent to which influential high-achievers across society attended a small group of highly selective schools, says University of Arkansas associate professor Jonathan Wai. Wai detailed this finding in a recent Nature article that focused on 34 of the country’s higher education institutions, and underscores “a huge education divide in this country,” he says.

Indeed, for this year’s list of the best colleges and universities for future leaders, TIME and Statista significantly widened the lens of leadership—but Ivy League schools and their top-flight peers still came out on top. The list is based on an analysis of 4,000 top U.S. leaders’ resumés, twice the number used to produce last year’s list. Top leaders were also identified in a more diverse range of positions and sectors compared to last year. Yes, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, but also other C-suite executives including top corporate HR and diversity officers. Leaders drawn from the fields of government, sports, and AI, as well as major mission-driven nonprofits and religious organizations, were also in the mix.

This wide array of leaders was still most likely to have attended an Ivy League university or a similarly prestigious school, such as Stanford, MIT, University of California Berkeley, and University of Chicago. But look below the top 20 slots and a more complex picture of where top U.S. leaders emerge from comes into view. Flagship public university campuses from across the country, liberal arts colleges and historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are all represented. The University of Pittsburgh, Howard University, and the University of Hawai'i System now rank in the top 50; the latter two institutions make their debut this year.

Read More: The Best Companies for Future Leaders 2025

In recent years business leaders have been rethinking recruiting practices to diversify workforces and leadership pipelines, says Gena Cox, an author and consultant who helps companies become more inclusive. “Recruiters are casting a wider net,” she says, going beyond the highly selective schools to look for new talent in HBCUs and business schools at lower-ranked public universities. But a shift away from the traditional focus on Ivies is “not yet visible in top-level leadership in American companies,” Cox says. That will take years. Moreover, finding talent from a more diverse array of schools is just the first step. “Organizations need to specifically focus on preparing people for executive roles,” she says.

But even as some organizations embrace more expansive recruiting approaches, there’s no reason to think demand for graduates of top-tier universities is ebbing. Business schools at so-called Ivy Plus universities are still watching scores of freshly minted MBAs head into the finance, tech, and consulting sectors—all top fields for producing high-profile leaders. “In any given year,” says Abby Scott of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, “25 to 30 percent of our full-time MBA graduates join management consulting firms” such as Deloitte and PwC, some after completing plum internships. About 30% of Haas’ Class of 2023 graduates went into tech, with another 14.5% going into the finance services sector. Harvard Business School graduates are most likely to go into the same three industries.

Who ends up in elite schools matters because they effectively facilitate a kind of clustering that contributes to societal divides, Wai notes. Consider Harvard, which is far and away the most common source of the country’s top leaders. It’s not because an education from the nearly 400-year-old university is intrinsically more valuable than what the school’s peers offer. The university, Wai says, “has accumulated advantage over time, and it became the winning brand. The ‘Harvard effect’ is about brand power.” —Jeremy Gantz