Being a University of Michigan Alum, there is an often quoted fact the UM has the largest Alumni base in America. That never made any sence to me. There are several schools with larger enrollments, it it would seem to me to be a petty direct correlation that having more students in your school, would lead to more graduates of it.
But in searching I can’t seem to find any actual list of alumni numbers on the web.
Anybody know for sure?
I don’t know the answer but there are at least two other things you need to compare the very large schools:
Graduation rates
School size over time. Some of the other really big schools may have been much smaller in years past.
It’s a marketing gimmick that University’s use, I’ve heard other schools mention that they have the largest alumni base. They’ll use different metrics like how many total living alumni there are, # of living alumni that donate, # that are enrolled in alumni groups, alumni remaining in the area, etc. Even the term alumni is subjective, and can imply graduates, or former students who didn’t graduate.
If you look at the top 10 schools on wikipedia you’ll see some of them mention the largest alumni base.
I found this: http://www.bigtenchallenge.org/
based on # of alumni donations.