Explore 26,198 people across 30 measures of extraordinary achievement. See where they went to school, which paths repeat, who broke the pattern, and how those patterns have changed.
A remarkably small group of schools appears again and again. 40.2% of recorded undergraduate origins in the founding corpus come from just 34 institutions. Explore the map.
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A Different Way to Ask the Data
Peer-selected honors draw far more heavily from Elite 34 institutions than elected or military populations in the founding corpus.
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Ask about a school, a person, an achievement, an era or a pattern.
About the Data
American Atlas begins with the research corpus assembled by Jonathan Wai and collaborators. It describes the people represented in the data, where they studied, and how those patterns differ across forms of achievement.
It does not claim that a college caused someone's success. It does not predict who will succeed next. Every number in Atlas can be traced to its source.