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So you want to be a CEO?

November 7th, 2005

CEOI was looking at the stock market through Yahoo and came upon a poll question asking what the most common undergraduate degree a CEO held was. The correct answer to this was engineering which came out to 21%. With a little further digging, I came across this site that profiled the S&P 500 CEO’s. Here are a few of their conclusions.

1. 21% of all CEO’s have an engineering degree. The next highest was Business Administration at 15%. So if you want to eventually be a CEO, stick to either engineering or business, mainly engineering I’d say. Don’t be an accountant if you have CEO aspirations as only 5% have accounting degrees.

2. You don’t have to goto an IVY league school to become a CEO. In fact, you’re probably more likely to become a CEO going to a public school as the University of Wisconsin was tied with Harvard with 3% of CEO’s being alumni from those respective schools. Also, 3% of CEO’s were college dropouts too. So if you’re truly smart, and have ambition, you don’t need school to succeed, although don’t come blaming me when you’re working at McDonald’s. I also believe a few years back, the University of Illinois had the distinction of being the top school with the most CEOs as alumni. So going IVY league isn’t always the best route to go.

3. You gotta put in the work. The median age for CEO’s was 56 years old while having a company tenure of 19 years. So for those of you fresh out of school dreaming of moving up the corporate ladder quickly, put those dreams on hold, and get to work. Many of these CEO’s stayed at their company the entire time and worked their way up through the ranks.

4. You’ll most likely need an advanced degree. 38% of CEO’s hold MBA’s. Another 29% of CEO’s in the S&P 500 hold advanced degrees in fields other than one from an MBA. That’s 67% who hold a degree beyond their Bachelor’s. So if you have aspirations of one day becoming a CEO, stay in school and keep staying in school.

5. When you become CEO, don’t expect to stay CEO for too long. For CEO’s in the S&P 500, their median tenure was only 4 years. So when you become CEO, you’ll have around 4 years to show everyone how good a job you can do. After that, it’s onto another job or retirement.

6. Expect to do a lot of Finance, Marketing, or Operation work while as a CEO. Even those that had engineering degrees, found themselves doing more business work. So make sure you’re atleast ok with the business side of things before you begin your work towards being a CEO.

7. It helps to have either military or international experience before accepting a position as a CEO. 15% of CEOs had military experience while 33% had international experience.

Well, for those aspiring CEO’s out there, I hope this helps. While there are many ways to become a CEO, trends do occur for a reason. So pay attention and do what you can to help your cause. :cool:

Posted by Lawrence in Taibro Guides | (Visited 9254 times)

20 Comments »

  1. what’s a CEO,man i’m really been having to use the dictshonhary.:razz:that is so unfair.

    Comment by holly — 11/8/05 @ 9:08 pm

  2. Point #2 is misleading. 8% of the CEOs in the S&P500 have undergrad degrees from Harvard, not 4%.

    89% of the CEOs in the S&P500 do not have ivy league undergrad degrees. 4x more likely a CEO will be from a publicly funded uni than ivy.

    Comment by Nissan — 11/10/05 @ 2:58 pm

  3. hmm, Not sure where you get the 8% when it says above the graph that 3% had degrees from Harvard. Also, it’s not quite 4x since there are still private universities that aren’t ivy league. Still, a good amount from public schools.

    Comment by Lawrence — 11/10/05 @ 3:44 pm

  4. Which graph? The table breaking down the S&P rank & corresponding undergrad uni shows 4% of CEOs of S&P co’s ranked 1-100 have Harvard degrees. Then, 301-400 have another 4% w/undergrad Harvard degrees.

    The 4x statistic was taken from a Bloomberg article which further analyzes the Spencer Stuart data: http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nifea&&sid=aIMI5Fx8d9sM

    Comment by Nissan — 11/16/05 @ 10:23 am

  5. yea, but 4% of 100 is 4, + another 4% of 100 is another 4. Out of 500, that’s around 8/500 which isn’t quite 8%. So I’d say the 8% is a little high, and 3% is reasonable.

    Comment by Lawrence — 11/16/05 @ 12:44 pm

  6. im gonna become ceo, so screw u

    Comment by rbn — 12/2/05 @ 9:23 am

  7. being a ceo would be sweet!
    I would be my own board of directors & chairman of the board!:mrgreen:

    Comment by Zion — 1/8/06 @ 11:10 pm

  8. CEO is defined as:”Cheif Executive Officer”
    Cheif as in;your the cheif
    executive as in;you have excelent executive thinking.
    officer as in; you have athority over everyone,well-except freewill.:lol::lol::lol:

    Comment by Zion — 1/8/06 @ 11:20 pm

  9. [quote]being a ceo would be sweet!
    I would be my own board of directors & chairman of the board! :mrgreen:[\quote]

    more like they will own you………. a CEO is under the board of directors, not the other way around….

    and you can be chairman if your lucky

    Comment by Anthony — 4/19/06 @ 1:58 pm

  10. what is meant by : international experience?

    Comment by dan — 9/15/06 @ 8:28 pm

  11. hahaha! international experience. I would rather be my own boss, I do pretty way like this without having to worry about answering to a bunch of stockholders or worring about increasing earnings just to impress the board….I love the stock market, but as an investor not from the inside..i think…

    Comment by bill nedas — 9/23/06 @ 2:05 am

  12. CEO is defined as:”Cheif Executive Officer”
    Cheif as in;your the cheif
    executive as in;you have excelent executive thinking.
    officer as in; you have athority over everyone,well-except freewill.:lol::lol::lol:

    Cheif is spelled Chief
    Excelent is spelled excellent
    athority is spelled authority
    freewill is spelled free will

    Comment by bogus spelling — 2/25/07 @ 1:41 pm

  13. wow…that Zion guy doesn’t look like he’s gonna make it to anything above clerk with that kind of spelling.

    Comment by Osiris — 2/26/07 @ 1:22 am

  14. Oh and another thing to become CEO you obviously need education, but most of all you need connections and if you don’t have any then I sure hope your one lucky fella!!!

    Comment by Osiris — 2/26/07 @ 1:27 am

  15. true dat, cleak might be a bit high stick to trash person

    Comment by true dat — 3/17/08 @ 8:05 pm

  16. Of course Public Universities are going to have the same % of CEOs. Just remember that less than 1% of the college population goes to IVY, while upwards of 60% go to Puplic. Proportionally, WAY more CEOs come from Ivy. And although 15% of CEOs major in business, 40% of college students major in business. Liberal Arts degrees do better when looking at things proportionally. I’m not surprised by the success of engineers, though. Engineers are smart.

    Comment by DeepcreekXC — 5/7/08 @ 9:08 pm

  17. Hey Genius, check out suggestion #2 and #4, they are contradictory.

    Comment by nunya bizness — 6/20/08 @ 10:33 am

  18. There is another way to become a CEO: Start your own company and name yourself CEO :smile: .

    Comment by Ethan — 8/15/08 @ 8:51 pm

  19. A lot depends on instincts and a business sense mainly- Google or Yahoo top guns have the business sense to capitalise on their technical strengths/products. On the contrary, most technical people have a narrow mindset and cant see the whole picture.

    Cheers!

    Comment by Tharikh — 8/26/08 @ 2:54 am

  20. But also their are thousands less people in ivy league schools than in all the other university.

    Comment by Jose — 9/28/08 @ 3:14 pm

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