Last year, colleges and universities nationwide received $24.4 billion in donations, according to The New York Times. Harvard led all schools with donations totaling $540 million. While that amount was enough to get Harvard its 27th top ranking on the donation list, it was slightly less than the $545 million the school received the previous year.

Stanford University received the second highest donation amount, $524 million, an eight percent increase from last year, according to The Times. Cornell University ranked third with $386 million in donations. Cornell's 22 percent increase in donations from the previous year was due in part to a $50 million bequest.

Several other schools received around $300 million in donations. The University of Pennsylvania received $333 million, the University of Southern California received $322 million and Johns Hopkins University received $312 million. "Also in the top 10 were Columbia, $291 million; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, $290 million; Yale, $265 million; and the University of California, Los Angeles, $262 million," according to The Times.

The money schools receive comes from a variety of different sources. Alumni giving constitutes the largest source of contributions to schools, according to The Times. For all schools, alumni giving totaled $6.7 billion, which is 28 percent of the total amount of money donated. Schools also receive money from foundations, whose contributions total $6.2 billion. Corporations donated $4.4 billion to schools.

"Ann E. Kaplan, director of the council's annual survey on Voluntary Support of Education, said that giving by individual donors who were not alumni rose 22 percent last year," according to The Times.

Even with contributions from all of these sources, voluntary giving only accounted for seven percent of college and university expenditures last year, which is one percent lower than 2001's high of eight percent. Kaplan told The Times that since contributions account for such a small portion of expenditures of schools, voluntary giving "is not likely to offset declines in other funding sources."

The College received $33.4 million in voluntary giving last year. The College is significantly smaller in size than the schools that appear on the top 10 list of donations received. However, the College also receives significant support from alumni in the forms of internships, visits to campus and mentoring.