Colleges With the Richest Students: What the Data Reveals

When people ask which U.S. colleges enroll the wealthiest students, they’re usually picturing the Ivy League. The data backs that intuition, but it also reveals something more surprising. According to research from Opportunity Insights, the Harvard-based team led by economist Raj Chetty, at 38 U.S. colleges, more students come from families in the top 1% of the income scale than from the entire bottom 60% combined. Five of those schools are in the Ivy League (namely Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn, and Brown), but the list also includes liberal arts colleges, Southern flagships, and small private universities.

That gap between perception and reality matters. Understanding which schools enroll the wealthiest students and how researchers actually measure that wealth helps families read between the lines of college marketing, sticker prices, and rankings. This guide walks through the three main metrics researchers use, the schools that rank highest under each, and what families should take away from the numbers.

• How Researchers Measure Student Wealth at Colleges
• Which Colleges Have the Richest Students
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Takeaways

How Researchers Measure Student Wealth at Colleges

“Richest students” is not measured by just one metric. Researchers and journalists rely on several different data points, and each one tells a slightly different story. The three most common measures are:

• Median family income. The midpoint of all enrolled students’ family incomes.
• Percentage of students from the top 1% of earners. Families making roughly $630,000 or more per year (in 2015 dollars, the benchmark used in Opportunity Insights and the New York Times’ Upshot college mobility project).
• Share of students from the top 20% of earners. Families making roughly $110,000 or more per year.

A fourth metric, endowment per student, often gets bundled into “wealthiest college” conversations, but it measures something different: how rich the institution is, not how rich its students are. We’ll come back to why that distinction matters.

Median family income vs. percentage of top 1% earners

A school’s median family income tells you about the middle of its student body, while the top-1% share tells you about the very top. Those two numbers can move independently, and often do.

For example, Harvard’s median family income for the class of 2013 was about $168,000, with roughly 15% of students from top-1% families, per The Upshot’s analysis. That’s wealthy, but not the most concentrated. Trinity College in Connecticut, by contrast, had a lower-profile reputation but enrolled 26% of its student body from the top 1%, the highest share recorded among colleges studied. Trinity isn’t an Ivy, but by this single metric, it eclipsed every one of them.

That’s why some “richest students” lists reveal schools families don’t expect: small liberal arts colleges and certain private research universities concentrate top-1% students at rates that rival or exceed the Ivy League, even when their overall median income is comparable to peers.

How Pell Grant and federal loan data signal student wealth

Another way researchers gauge a student body’s wealth is by looking at what isn’t there: low-income aid. Federal Pell Grants go almost entirely to families earning under roughly $60,000 a year, and federal student loans are taken on disproportionately by students whose families can’t fully fund tuition out of pocket. When both numbers are unusually low at a given school, it’s a strong signal that the student body skews wealthy.

According to federal College Scorecard data for the 2022–2023 academic year:

• Only 3% of Harvard undergraduates received federal student loans, the lowest figure among Ivy Plus colleges (the Ivy League plus Stanford, MIT, Duke, and the University of Chicago).
• Princeton also reported just 3% federal loan recipients in the same period.
• MIT, Stanford, Yale, and the University of Chicago all fell between 4% and 6%.

For context, the median Pell Grant share at Ivy Plus schools sits in the mid-teens to low 20s, compared to about 33% nationwide for four-year public and private nonprofit institutions. Schools at the lowest end of these aid figures generally have the wealthiest student bodies, though as we’ll see, several have made public commitments to expand low-income access in recent years.

Why endowment rankings differ from student wealth rankings

It’s easy to assume that a college with a giant endowment must enroll the wealthiest students. The two are connected, since wealthy donors built those endowments and wealthy families are more likely to apply, but they measure very different things.

An endowment reflects accumulated institutional wealth: the result of centuries of donations, investment returns, and tax-advantaged growth. According to the 2025 NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments, U.S. colleges and universities collectively held $944.3 billion in endowment assets, with a 10-year average annual return of 7.7%.

Endowment per student is a better measure of institutional wealth than total endowment alone, since it adjusts for school size. If we rank schools by that metric, Harvard now leads the list. Here are the other top 10 U.S. universities by endowment per student, based on the most recent NACUBO data:

Source: 2025 NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments. Per-student figures are calculated using total enrollment (undergraduate + graduate).

Note: Harvard’s total endowment for FY25 has since climbed to roughly $56.9 billion in updated university reporting; figures above reflect the data used in the NACUBO per-student ranking.

Harvard’s $6.94 million per student is a measure of institutional resources, not family wealth. Some of the schools that rank highest on endowment per student, such as Princeton, are also among the most generous financial aid providers in the country, partly because that endowment lets them be. So a school with the wealthiest institution doesn’t automatically have the wealthiest students, and vice versa.

Which Colleges Have the Richest Students

There is no single, definitive ranking of “colleges with the richest students” since every list depends on the metric used. The most widely cited rankings draw on Chetty’s Opportunity Insights data and the New York Times’ Upshot economic diversity database, which together analyzed millions of anonymous tax filings linked to college attendance records. The sections below organize the findings by metric.

Schools where top 1% students outnumber bottom 60% students

The most striking finding from Chetty’s research is that at 38 U.S. colleges, more students come from families in the top 1% than from the entire bottom 60% of earners combined. The group includes:

• Five Ivy League schools, namely Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn, and Brown.
• Top liberal arts colleges, including Williams, Amherst, Middlebury, Colgate, and Colby.
• Highly selective private universities, including Washington University in St. Louis, Vanderbilt, Duke, Georgetown, and Notre Dame.
• Specialty and regional schools with reputations for wealthy student bodies, including Trinity College (CT), Colorado College, Southern Methodist University, and Washington and Lee.

Chetty’s broader Opportunity Insights work also found that children from families in the top 1% are 77 times more likely to attend an Ivy League college than children from families in the bottom income quintile, even accounting for academic credentials. 

A follow-up 2023 paper, co-authored by Chetty, David Deming of Harvard, and John Friedman of Brown, found that at Ivy Plus colleges, applicants from top-1% families are more than twice as likely to be admitted as middle-class applicants with comparable SAT or ACT scores.

The researchers attributed most of the gap to three factors: legacy preferences, higher non-academic ratings, and recruited-athlete advantages, none of which, the paper noted, correlate with better post-college outcomes.

Top schools ranked by median student family income

Ranking by median family income, or by share of top-1% students, reveals schools that are not Ivy League but still enroll a disproportionately wealthy student body. Trinity College, as noted, had the highest top-1% share recorded by The Upshot at 26%, with about 75% of students from the top 20% overall. Washington University in St. Louis had a different but equally telling profile: roughly 22% of students from the top 1%, and 84% from the top 20%, the highest top-20% concentration in The Upshot’s database.

Here’s a snapshot of schools with the highest share of students from top-1% families, drawing on The Upshot’s data:

Source: The New York Times’ Upshot college mobility project, drawing on Opportunity Insights data. Top 1% = families earning $630,000+; top 20% = $110,000+; bottom 20% = $20,000 or less, all in 2015 dollars. Class of 2013 cohort.

A few patterns worth noting: small liberal arts colleges dominate the list, but a handful of larger research universities like WashU, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, and SMU show up because they enroll dense concentrations of wealthy students despite larger campuses. WashU has acknowledged this publicly; the university adopted a need-blind undergraduate admissions policy in 2021 and has since made measurable progress in expanding Pell Grant enrollment.

Ivy League schools and student income concentration

Within the Ivy League itself, the data shows a consistent pattern with meaningful variation school to school. Roughly 1 in 6 Ivy League students has parents in the top 1% of earners. Using The Upshot’s class-of-2013 data, here’s how the eight Ivy League schools compare:

Source: The New York Times’ Upshot college mobility project. Median family income reported in 2015 dollars.

The variation matters. Dartmouth and Brown have the highest top-1% concentrations among Ivies; Cornell and Columbia, by virtue of larger and more diverse enrollments, sit lower. Federal aid data tells the same story in reverse: according to College Scorecard, Harvard and Princeton both reported just 3% of undergraduates receiving federal loans in 2022–2023, the lowest in the Ivy League. Cornell, on the other hand, reported 23%.

It’s also worth noting that several of these schools have, in recent years, expanded need-based aid significantly. Harvard now charges nothing in tuition for families earning $200,000 or less, per its updated financial aid policy, and similar moves have come from Princeton, MIT, and Penn.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Which college has the richest students in the United States?

By percentage of students from the top 1% of family earners, Trinity College in Connecticut ranks highest in The Upshot’s database, with 26% of its student body coming from top-1% families. By share of students from the top 20%, Washington University in St. Louis leads, at 84%.

2. Are Ivy League students mostly from wealthy families?

Wealth is overrepresented at every Ivy, but it mostly depends on definition. Roughly 1 in 6 Ivy League students comes from top-1% families, and about two-thirds come from the top 20%. At the same time, schools like Harvard and Princeton enroll meaningful shares of Pell Grant recipients (16% and 20%, respectively) and have made tuition free for most middle-income families.

3. How does family income affect the chances of getting into an elite college?

Significantly, even after accounting for academics. Chetty, Deming, and Friedman’s 2023 study found that applicants from top-1% families are more than twice as likely to be admitted to an Ivy-Plus school as middle-class applicants with comparable SAT or ACT scores. The researchers attributed most of the gap to legacy preferences, higher non-academic ratings (often tied to private-school resources), and recruited-athlete advantages.

4. Do colleges with wealthy students offer good financial aid for low-income students?

Often, yes, and frequently the best in the country. The same schools that enroll dense concentrations of wealthy students tend to have the largest endowments, which fund generous need-based aid. Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, and Yale all meet 100% of demonstrated financial need without loans, and several charge nothing in tuition for families below specific income thresholds.

5. What is the difference between a rich college and a college with rich students?

A rich college is one with a large endowment, institutional wealth accumulated over time through donations and investment returns. A college with rich students is one whose student body comes disproportionately from high-income families. The two often overlap (such as in the case of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton), but not always. Some schools have very wealthy student bodies and only mid-sized endowments (like Trinity College and SMU), and some have large endowments but more economically diverse students than their peers like (the UC system and certain public flagships with significant endowments).

Takeaways

• At 38 U.S. colleges, including five Ivies, more students come from the top 1% than the entire bottom 60% combined, according to research from Raj Chetty’s Opportunity Insights team.
• “Richest students” depends on the metric. Median family income, top-1% share, top-20% share, Pell Grant rates, and federal loan rates each tell a different part of the story, and different metrics surface very different schools.
• Endowment per student measures institutional wealth, not student wealth. Harvard tops the NACUBO ranking at $6.94 million per student, but a large endowment typically funds the most generous need-based aid, meaning the “richest” institutions are often the most affordable for low-income families who get in.
• Several non-Ivy schools have higher top-1% concentrations than Harvard, including Trinity College (26%), Colorado College (24%), Vanderbilt (23%), WashU (22%), and Middlebury (23%). If wealth concentration shapes your school search, the list goes well beyond the Ivy League.
• Schools that enroll the wealthiest students often have the deepest financial aid pockets. Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, and Yale all meet 100% of demonstrated financial need without loans, but you need to get admitted first.
• Wealth concentration data makes one thing clear: the students landing spots at elite colleges are coming in with every possible advantage. If you want expert, personalized guidance to level the playing field, AdmissionSight’s Private Consulting Program gives you one-on-one support from counselors who know exactly what top schools are looking for, and how to position you to get there.