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forbes-30-under-30-2020
(Left to right) Rooshi Roy, cofounder of aavrani, a luxury skincare company "inspired by ancient beauty rituals." Sayid Abdullaev, a product marketing manager at Youtube who spearheads initiatives helping LGBTQ refugees.

A total of 32 Penn graduates were featured on the 2020 Forbes 30 Under 30 lists, making Penn the third-most represented university in the world on these lists — following Harvard and Stanford. 

This marks an increase in both representation and ranking from last year, when 25 Penn graduates and one current Ph.D. student were featured on the lists, which made Penn the fourth-most represented university for 2019. The 2018 lists featured 26 Penn graduates and placed Penn as the university with the fifth-most honorees. 

Credit: Julia Schorr

The 30 under 30 lists, released by Forbes each year, feature 30 young entrepreneurs in each of 20 industries, ranging from finance to media to education. This year, more than 15,000 online nominations were made for just 600 spots, Forbes reported. 

Credit: Julia Schorr

Penn graduates appeared in 14 of the 20 categories, a slight increase from 13 categories last year. Art & Style, Consumer Technology, Energy, Games, Hollywood & Entertainment, and Science are the only categories in which no Penn graduates are represented.

Penn’s strongest showing came in the Venture Capital category, with five graduates. The categories for Finance, Marketing & Advertising, and Sports also saw high Penn representation, with four graduates each.

Among Penn's different schools, the College of Arts and Sciences saw the highest representation on the list, with 18 graduates — double the amount from last year. The Wharton School saw the next-highest representation with 15 graduates, three more than the previous year’s total. Of these, 12 graduated from Wharton's undergraduate program and three from Wharton’s MBA program. Both the Lauder Institute and the Weitzman School of Design were represented with one graduate each.  

Credit: Julia Schorr

While the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Perelman School of Medicine both featured graduates on last year’s list, they did not make an appearance in this year's Forbes rankings.