section_path: Selection process/Prior experience
section_name: Prior experience
paragraph_text: Prior experience
  
  There are no requirements for previous or concurrent offices held by the President or presidential candidates. However, every President except Donald Trump has been a governor, U.S. senator or Congressman, general or cabinet member.
  
  The most common previous profession of presidents is lawyer, applying to 27 of the 45 men who have served as President. However, several future Presidents abandoned the study or practice of law prior to the Presidency. There has never been a property qualification for the Presidency or other federal offices, but, in the early years of the republic, there were property qualifications for voting or for some of the stepping-stone offices to the Presidency (particularly governorships). Prior to the Civil War, it was common for presidents to be men of significant property: Presidents from the North tended to own small farms, while several Southern presidents owned plantations and slaves. While several later presidents came from abject poverty, others, such as the Roosevelts, John Kennedy, and Donald Trump, were parties to extensive family fortunes.
  
  33 of the 45 men who served as President, including every president since 1953 and all but one since 1901, have had a bachelor's degree. Of those, 16 presidents received a Bachelor's or advanced degree from colleges in the Ivy League.