People who work in finance say these are the 25 best colleges in America

harvard flag dollar graduation

(REUTERS/Brian Snyder )
People who work in finance say Harvard best prepares its students for success after graduation.

We recently released our seventh annual list of the 50 best colleges in America.

To create this list, we asked more than 1,000 of our readers to weigh in on which schools best prepare students for success after graduation.

The majority of the responses came from readers who work in the finance industry, and 54.5% of them agreed on one thing: The major that most helps students become successful is business.

While MIT was ranked No. 1 on our main list of the best colleges, the results differed dramatically when we filtered the responses to include only survey participants who say they work in the finance industry.

Over 66% of finance professionals said that Harvard University was the best school. Yale University came in second with a 56.4% response rate, and Stanford University took third place with 54.6%.

MIT dropped from the top spot down to No. 5, possibly due to MIT's prevalence as an engineering and technology school, which likely makes it less desirable to finance professionals. Similarly, CalTech dropped from fifth place down to 16th, possibly due to CalTech's primary focus in science and engineering instead of business and finance.

Here are the top 25 colleges in the US, according to people who work in finance:

1. Harvard University

2. Yale University

3. Stanford University

4. Duke University

5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

6. Princeton University

7. Columbia University

8. Dartmouth College

9. University of Pennsylvania

10. Cornell University

11. TIE: University of California at Berkeley

11. TIE: Georgetown University

13. TIE: University of Chicago

13. TIE: Northwestern University

15. New York University

16. California Institute of Technology

17. TIE: Johns Hopkins University

17. TIE: University of Virginia

19. Boston College

20. United States Naval Academy

21. TIE: University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

21. TIE: University of Notre Dame

23. TIE: Amherst College

23. TIE: Brown University

25. United States Military Academy

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