STEP 1: GO TO COLLEGE
STEP 2: DROP OUTMost successful people dropped out of college. Notice the word "dropped out". This is different from having never attended. Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Richard Branson* (Virgin), Michael Dell (Dell), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Larry Page and Sergey Brin* (Google), Sean Parker (Napster and the first President of Facebook), the guy who made CNN, the list goes on...
Got a computer? Chances are, it's running either Windows (Gates) or OS X (Jobs). Got a phone? It's probably either an iPhone (Jobs), a Windows phone (Gates), or an Android phone (Page/Brin). Want to look something up? You'll probably either use Google (Page/Brin) or Bing (Gates).
*Technically, Branson was a high school dropout and the guys from Google dropped out of their postgrad programs but you get the idea.
EDIT: Elon Musk (Tesla) also dropped out of his postgrad:
He moved to California to pursue a PhD in applied physics at Stanford but left the program after two days to pursue his entrepreneurial aspirations in the areas of the Internet, renewable energy and outer space.
EDIT 2: The Ethereum guy, another dropout:
So whats his background? Buterin attended college for a year -- and then left due to Bitcoin opportunities. "I dont regret it," he said. "Look at what Im doing now."
So the message seems to be that
in order to be successful, generally you need to go to college (well, except Branson). But if there is one common thread that unites the most successful people of the world, then it is the fact that they proceeded to
drop out of college in order to follow their dreams and aspirations.
Not to mention college dropouts are over-represented among list of the billionaires.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_college_dropout_billionairesThe average net worth of billionaires who dropped out of college, $9.4 billion, is approximately triple that of billionaires with Ph.D.s, $3.2 billion. Even if one removes Bill Gates, who left Harvard University and is now worth $66.0 billion, college dropouts are worth $5.3 billion on average, compared to those who finished only bachelor's degrees, who are worth $2.9 billion.
You forgot to mention the founders of Oculus, Snapchat, WordPress, Dropbox and Tumblr. If I remember correctly, the latter dropped out of high school at 14. Pretty amazing if you ask me.
It depends a lot on what field you eventually go into and what you make of your college experience. Some jobs, like engineering, require a college education so you at least know the basics. But there are a lot of areas that don't require a college diploma to do well.
True. For some jobs (like an engineer or a surgeon, for example), there is really no other choice than going to college. Nobody is going to let you perform brain surgery or design a bridge if you don't hold the relevant qualifications. Then there are jobs like scientist and so on where a college degree is a huge help, but not technically mandatory. And then finally there are jobs like entrepreneur or programmer where a degree doesn't really help that much, if at all.
We seem to be in agreement here.
I can't tell if you're serious. Yes, the dropped out. But they were also very intelligent and had a great idea that became very successful. What about the thousands of people who dropped out and are living a shitty life right now? But I'm going to take your post as a joke and move on.
Most of his examples (and thus his definition of "successful") seem to be tech entrepreneurs. It probably doesn't translate to other fields.