Strategy

The 20 Schools With The Most Alumni At Google

Stanford University, College, fans, sports game
At least a few of these Stanford grads are going to end up at Google. Facebook/stanford
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As the Wall Street Journal declared earlier this year, everybody wants to work for Google

The search giant receives between 2.5 million and 3.5 million job applications a year, yet only 4,000 people get hired. 

Landing a gig is typically influenced by which school you attend, since networks, geography, and prestige are such powerful predictors in a job hunt

With that in mind, we took to LinkedIn's clever new education utility — which sorts through users' LinkedIn history to find trends — to figure out where you should go to college if you want to end up at the Googleplex. 

Here are the rankings of schools with the most alums at Google:

1. Stanford University (1,859 alumni)

2. University of California, Berkeley (1,645 alumni) 

3. Carnegie Mellon University (901 alumni)

4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (763 alumni)

5. University of California, Los Angeles (671 alumni)

6. University of Michigan (585 alumni)

7. Cornell University (537 alumni)

8. University of Washington (519 alumni)

9. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (490 alumni)

10. Harvard University (478 alumni)

11. San Jose State University (453 alumni)

12. University of California, San Diego (446 alumni)

13. University of Waterloo (419 alumni)

14. Tsinghua University (408 alumni)

15. The University of Texas at Austin (402 alumni)

16. University of California, Davis (371 alumni)

17. New York University (370 alumni)

18. University of Southern California (352 alumni)

19. University of Pennsylvania (335 alumni)

20. Georgia Institute of Technology (322 alumni)

So California looks like a good place to start.

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Drake Baer was Business Insider's editor-at-large, working across the newsroom to help produce ambitious journalism. For two and a half years before that, Baer served as deputy editor, overseeing a team of 20+ reporters and editors who cover the future of work, real estate, and small business. The fast-paced team was behind some of Insider's major packages in the last few years, including a state-by-state look into unemployment during the first year of the pandemic and in-depth profiles of "niche famous" characters such as real estate media tycoon Brandon Turner and HR icon Johnny C Taylor. They shed new light on big names, like Joe Biden, America's imperfect leader. He also cultivated thesis-oriented ideas journalism, whether it be on why "'diversity' and 'inclusion' are the emptiest words in corporate America" or why it's actually a horrible time to buy a house. (No, really, it is.) Before editing, his byline as a reporter was on the masthead for Fast Company and New York Magazine, covering the many intersections of social science, business, and economics. Baer has interviewed some our time's leading minds, including philanthropist Bill Gates, FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver, NBA champion and investor Steph Curry, "growth mindset" psychologist Carol Dweck, the rapper Q-Tip, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, and the man who gave a name to "disruptive innovation," the late Clay Christensen.Baer has published two books, the most recent being Perception: How Our Bodies Shape Our Minds, with Dennis Proffitt. In 2014, New York Times bestselling author and Wharton professor Adam Grant highlighted his first book, Everything Connects, as one of the 12 business books to read that year. He has been featured as a speaker at the Aspen Ideas Festival, presented at TedX Princeton, and moderated many panels.