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Beyond that: work hard. One-per-centers work 45.8 hours a week on average, with almost 40 per cent working more than 50 hours a week. For many, their job is their life. That’s not necessarily a condemnation. They often have very interesting jobs that also pay well, a double gift. But they don’t get a lot of down time.

As a professor in my day job, I’d like to say you also need to study hard to get into the one per cent. But, in fact, a third of one-per-centers have less than a bachelor’s degree. Education is getting more important, however. Fully 53.9 per cent of 1981’s one-per-centers didn’t have a bachelor’s degree. Advanced degrees also help, though not as much as you might think. In 1981, 28.5 per cent of one-per-centers had medical or other graduate degrees. In 2011, it was 35.6 per cent. Up, but not by a lot.

What should you study, if you do pursue your studies? No big surprise here: A quarter of one-per-centers studied business. The second most popular field (at 15.2 per cent) was health. If you’re undecided, that’s not necessarily a problem: Third (at 13.6 per cent) was “no specialization/no post-secondary.” Then came social sciences and related fields (12.2 per cent), engineering and applied sciences (10.3), applied science technologies and trades (7.6 per cent) and, a bit of a surprise, given how digitally obsessed we are these days, math, computer and physical sciences, at just 3.1 per cent.

If you study the humanities or fine and applied arts, you probably understand there’s more to life than money, which is good since only three out of 100 members of 2011’s one per cent studied these subjects.