How Influential is Your School?

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For the next three weeks, many American universities will be measured up exclusively by the strength of their basketball programs. But for those less impressed by “a group of pituitary cases trying to stuff a ball down a hoop,” as one Annie Hall player once put it, TIME has devised an alternate way to score schools: by the influence of their alumni.

To start, we rounded up the 107,408 living people whose Wikipedia profiles list at least one alma mater in the U.S., and scored each according to the length and breadth of his or her page on the site—the bigger the number, the greater the influence (more on that below). Then, we added up each school’s alumni scores to get its overall influence factor. Check it out:

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Louisiana State University is 5.07 times more influential than Mississippi State University

Louisiana State University is 1.32 times more influential than University of Alabama

Louisiana State University is 1.70 times more influential than Texas A&M University

Louisiana State University is 1.56 times more influential than University of Missouri

Louisiana State University is 2.91 times more influential than University of Mississippi

Louisiana State University is 1.68 times more influential than Auburn University

University of Florida is 1.89 times more influential than Louisiana State University

Louisiana State University is 1.77 times more influential than University of Arkansas

Louisiana State University is 1.28 times more influential than University of Georgia

Louisiana State University is 1.32 times more influential than University of Kentucky

Louisiana State University is 2.01 times more influential than University of South Carolina

Louisiana State University is 2.10 times more influential than Vanderbilt University

Louisiana State University is 1.20 times more influential than University of Tennessee

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