The university is regarded nationally and internationally as a center of excellence having graduated numerous important names in Brazilian history.

The Chamberlains' American School was revolutionary for the Brazilian standards at that time: no corporal punishment on students was permitted, and both boys and girls could attend classes.

In 1896, John Theron Mackenzie, an attorney from Phelps, New York, and his sisters donated US$50,000 "for the establishment of an engineering school to be built under the auspices of Mr. Chamberlain".

In 130 years of history (as of 2000), it is estimated that Mackenzie University has 300,000 alumni, many of them important personalities of Brazilian politics and civil society.

Among them surrealist artist André Breton is claimed as an alumnus, although this might reflect a mixup with his friend and collaborator Benjamin Péret, who lived in Brazil in 1929-1931; modernist painter Anita Malfatti; Brazil's most known basketball player Oscar Schmidt; car racer Émerson Fittipaldi; sea explorer Amyr Klink; Olympic golden medalist Robert Scheidt; journalists Boris Casoy and Ney Gonçalves Dias; businessmen Márcio Cypriano (CEO Bradesco), Ivan Zurita (CEO Nestlé, Brasil), Danilo Talanskas (Otis Elevator Company) and Emerson Kapaz; jurists Álvaro Villaça Azevedo and Carlos Miguel Aidar (former Brazilian Law Society President); Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Eros Roberto Grau; lawyer and scholar Antonio Carlos Rodrigues do Amaral; lawyer José Roberto Batochio; legal scholar Sérgio Pinto Martins (judge and labor law scholar), Roberto Justus; Tales Castelo Branco; architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha; Rubens Paiva civil engineer and Congressman at the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, opponent of military dictatorship in Brazil, tortured and murdered by the same dictatorship in 1971 MackGraphe is the Graphene and Nanomaterials Research Center at Mackenzie Presbyterian University, which aims to master processes in all stages of technology development, from the modeling of nanomaterials to their application.