26 of the most famous and successful Stanford University students of all time

Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Steinbeck attended Stanford briefly in the early 1920s, but he never graduated with a degree.

Steinbeck is most famous for his books "Of Mice and Men," "The Grapes of Wrath," and "East of Eden."

John F. Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States.

He started the M.B.A. program at Stanford, but dropped out before receiving his degree.

Doris Fisher cofounded Gap with her late husband Donald in 1969. Since then, Gap has expanded into Banana Republic, Gap Kids, and Old Navy.

Fisher is among the world's billionaires, worth $2.4 billion, according to Forbes.

Sandra Day O'Connor was a Supreme Court justice and graduated magna cum laude when she received her B.A. in economics in 1950.

The former Supreme Court justice continued her education at Stanford when she went to law school two years later.

She was appointed as Associate Supreme Court justice in 1981, making her the first woman on the court. On Aug. 12, 2009, President Barack Obama presented O'Connor with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Romney attended Stanford for one year, then he left to do missionary work, later finishing his degree at BYU.

Romney was the governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and is known for creating a universal in-state health care policy which came to be called "RomneyCare." He ran for president in 2008 and 2012. He was sworn in as Utah senator on January 3, 2019.

Ted Koppel is an English-American broadcast journalist.

At the age of 13, Koppel immigrated to America with his family and earned a Bachelor of Science from Syracuse University. In 1962, he earned an M.A. degree from Stanford, with studies in mass communication research and political science.

He became the anchor for ABC's "Nightline" — television's first late-night news program — in 1980. He has been awarded with 40 Emmy Awards.

He was voted best broadcast interviewer by The Washington Journalism Review in 1987.

Philip Hampson "Phil" Knight is the cofounder and chairman emeritus of Nike, a company which he dreamed up while he was attending Stanford.

In 1962, Knight received his M.B.A from the elite university.

With the completion of his business studies, Knight became an accountant by day and sold shoes out his trunk at night. In 1971, Nike was created and is the world's largest sports and fitness company today.

Ted Danson is an American actor and producer known as a major television star since breaking through in "Cheers" in the 1980s and, more recently, for his role on "The Good Place." He became interested in drama during his sophomore year at Stanford but decided to transfer to Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1972.

Danson won a Golden Globe award for Best Actor for his performance in the movie "Something About Amelia" (1984). In 1986, he made his debut as a producer in "When the Bough Breaks."

Susan Alexandra "Sigourney" Weaver is an American actress. She changed her own name to Sigourney at the age of 14 after the character Sigourney Howard in "The Great Gatsby."

In 1972, she graduated from Stanford with a degree in English, then went on to attend the Yale School of Drama with Meryl Streep, among others.

Weaver has been nominated for three Academy Awards.

Sally Ride became the first American woman to launch into space on June 18, 1983, on the space shuttle Challenger.

She was a professor at Stanford, and then later at the University of California, San Diego. Ride died at age 61 from pancreatic cancer on July 23, 2012.

Tobias Wolff is an American writer, author, and editor. His work appears often in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, and other magazines and journals.

Wolff volunteered for the army in 1964 and was discharged after four years. He received a B.A. from Oxford University and was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship to Stanford in 1975.

He taught at Syracuse University for 17 years before returning to Stanford as a professor of creative writing, where he currently teaches. President Obama presented the 2014 National Medal of Arts to Wolff.

Steven A. Ballmer was hired by Bill Gates to be the first business manager of Microsoft in 1980.

Ballmer received his bachelor's from Harvard with a degree in mathematics and economics, went on to work for Proctor & Gamble, and then attended Stanford University for graduate studies.

Less than two months after he started his M.B.A. program, Ballmer dropped out when Gates hired him.

He was the chief executive officer of Microsoft from January 13, 2000, to February 4, 2014, and is the current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers and the nonpartisan nonprofit USAFacts.

Shri Mukesh D. Ambani was born to a successful businessman whose life is said to have inspired the Hindi film "Guru."

Ambani received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Bombay (Mumbai). He pursued an M.B.A. from Stanford but dropped out after the first year to work at his father's polyester plant.

In 1981, Ambani joined Reliance Industries Limited, which is now the largest private sector company in India. Today, he is the chairman and managing director of Reliance.

John Elway was the quarterback at Stanford throughout his four years of attending the school. He broke numerous records, and became an All-American his senior year. Elway also played baseball at Stanford.

When he graduated, Elway was drafted by both the Baltimore Colts and the New York Yankees. While he ended up in the NFL, he turned down the Colts' offer and was traded to the Denver Broncos. Currently, he is the general manager and president of football operations for the NFL's Denver Broncos.

After receiving his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College in Maine and then teaching high school math in Swaziland with the Peace Corps, Hastings went back to school for computer science at Stanford.

Ten years later, after working at software companies, and founding his own small company, Hastings cofounded Netflix with Marc Randolph. He is currently the co-chief executive officer of the media giant.

Peter Thiel, venture capitalist, author, and co-founder of PayPal, received his undergraduate and law degree from Stanford.

Thiel is known for his early investment of $500,000 in Facebook in 2004. He also founded hedge fund Clarium Capital in 2005. Thiel has since returned to Stanford to teach classes on startups and business.

Senator Cory Booker received a B.A. in political science from Stanford, followed by an M.A. in sociology in 1992. He earned his J.D. in 1997 from Yale Law School.

He would later go on to become the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, then senator for the state, and was one of the Democrats who ran for president in the 2020 election.

Rachel Maddow is an American television host and political commentator.

Maddow graduated from Stanford in 1994 with a degree in public policy and was named a Rhodes Scholar for post-graduate studies at Oxford University.

She is the host of MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show."

The championship golfer only went to the school for two years. During his time there, he was named first-team all-American both years.

Lawrence "Larry" Page is an American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur. He cofounded Google.

Page and Sergey Brin — Google's other cofounder — met at Stanford when both men were pursuing doctorate degrees. With investments from their friends, both men dropped out of Stanford and launched Google from a garage.

Page is worth an estimated $67.8 billion, per Forbes.

Laura Jeanne "Reese" Witherspoon is an actress, producer, and entrepreneur.

Witherspoon spent her early childhood years in Germany where her father served as a military surgeon. At the age of 7, she began modeling and landed her first major acting role in "The Man in the Moon" at 14.

She attended Stanford in the mid-1990s to study English literature but has been on leave since 1996.

Witherspoon is known for her roles in, among many others, "Election," "Legally Blonde," "Wild" and the TV series "Big Little Lies."

Foudy was a member of two FIFA World Cup championship teams in 1991 and 1999, and she played on three USA Olympic teams. She was also accepted into Stanford's medical school, which she deferred for two years and then decided to not accept.

Since her soccer years, Foudy has also been a sports broadcaster, including as a sports desk reporter on NBC for the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Fredrick Aaron Savage is an American actor and producer. He began his career at the age of 9 and got his break in the television series "The Wonder Years."

At the age of 12, he became the youngest person to have ever been nominated for an Emmy Award as best performance by a lead actor.

Savage received his B.A. from Stanford with a degree in English in 1999 and was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.

His brother is the actor Ben Savage.

Former President Bill Clinton's daughter began studying chemistry at Stanford, but switched her major to history.

Clinton founded the Of Many Institute for Multifaith Leadership at NYU and serves as its co-chair.