Most high school counselors want you to believe you have to go to college if you want to be successful in life. But that myth has been disproven time and again.
Have you ever wondered just how important school is? Everyone knows how important it is to stay in school, get a good education, and graduate.
According to everything we are taught as children there’s no way you can be successful in life without school. But it may be hard to stay focused after reading about the success of these famous dropouts.
Although I do believe you need school for certain things like learning how to interact with people and reading and writing and so on, but is it absolutey really necessary to go to school for years in order to succeed? Hard work, drive, natural talent, and sheer luck helped them overcome their lack of education, but many still returned to school later in life.
I guess in some degree you need some type of education to be somewhat successful but a lot of celebrities have proven if you have the drive and a dream to go somewhere in life you can get there no matter how much schooling you might have. In my personal opinion if you can read and write then there is no reason why you can’t be successful in whatever you might pick to do with your life just follow your dream like these celebrities did!
Something that really surprised me when I began to study business is the lack of connection between business success and formal education. There were times when I was a teenager and college student where I almost thought something was wrong with me because working a job for 40+ years didn't have me excited compared to my classmates.
What i'm driving at is that you have your success in your hands. The lack of a formal education does not have to be an excuse not to succeed in life unless you want it to be. You don't need to graduate from a college in order to be successful in life? If you can open a book and read, there is absolutely no reason why you can’t have the same knowledge you will get by graduating from a college. The only difference is a piece of paper that will cost you money and 4 years of your life.
Ok maybe its a bit simplistic view against college but its not very far from the truth.
Final Words:
There are many successful and famous people in the country, and even the world, who made it big without ever getting a college degree. Yes, some of them got lucky but most of them took proactive steps that put them in the right place at the right time. Some of them went for a few semesters at most, and some never went to college at all.
Here’s a list of 37 famous people that didn’t graduate college:
1) Michael Saul Dell:
Michael Dell, the founder and CEO of Dell, Inc. , dropped out of University of Texas to run PC’s Limited (now Dell) at the age of 19. When he was 15 he used to take apart Apple II computers and rebuild it just for the hell of it.
He first started his computer company in his college dorm room, later using company’s earnings and family loans to expand. In 2008, Forbes ranked Michael Dell #11 in its 400 Richest Americans. As of 2009, he has an estimated net worth of $12. 3 billion.
2) Steve Jobs:
Apple Computers with Steve Wozniak – NeXT Computer – Pixar Animation. Dropped out of Reed College only after one semester.
4) Paul Allen:
Paul Allen was the other half of Microsoft with Bill Gates the same way Steve Wozniak was a partner with Jobs on Apple. He dropped out of Washington State University to work as a programmer.
5) John Carmack:
Cofounder of id Software and lead programmer of famous games such as Wolfenstein 3D, Quake, Doom. He dropped out of University of Missouri only after 2 years to work as a freelance programmer.
6) Quentin Tarantino
Writer and film director who is best known for his movies Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill Volume 1 and 2, Reservoir Dogs, From Dusk Till Dawn and many more was born March 27, 1963 and dropped out of High School in grade 9. Went on to become one of the most successful movie/writers in Hollywood today.
7) Dave Thomas
Best known for “Wendy’s” his chain of fast food restaurants was born July 2, 1932 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Got his first job by the age of 12 and moved out and dropped out of school at the young age of 15 years old. Invested in KFC restaurant chain after meeting Col. Sanders in 1956 and became a millionaire by the age of 35 and by 1969 Dave Thomas had opened his first “Wendy’s” and the rest is history. Dave did end up graduating almost 45 years later in 1993 and finally died of liver cancer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 20012002.
Johnny DeppOscar nominated movie actor known for his TV show 21 Jump Street and many movies like Edward Scissor hands, Secret Window, Blow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and many more was born on June 9, 1963 in Owensboro Kentucky, USA. At age 16 his parents divorced and shortly after Johnny dropped out of High School to go on to be a movie star making his millions and opening his own night club the “Viper Room”.
9) Nicholas Cage
Born Jan 7, 1964 movie actor Nicholas Cage best known for his movies Face Off, Gone in 60 Seconds, Rumble Fish and Fast Times at Ridgemont High and many others dropped out of Beverly High at the age of 17 years old. Went on to become ranked #37 in Premiere’s 100 Most Powerful People in Hollywood in 1998. Between the years of 1983 to 2004 Nicholas Cage had made $76,285,000 off only 12 of his films.
10) Christina Aguilera
Born Dec 1980 on Staten Island Christina was destined for fame. Early in high school Christina’s mother pulled her out of school to home school her because other kids where jealous of her new found fame. Christina has now moved on through life making a ton of number one songs on the charts and selling over 25 million records worldwide.
11) Jim Carrey
Born on Jan 17, 1962 in Newmarket, Ontario Canada dropped out of high school at the age of only 16 years old. Jim eventually moved on to do many movies and is best known for his work on Ace Venture, Brue Almighty, Number 23, Man on the Moon and many more. This Canadian dropout has won 2 Golden Globes, owns his own 25 million dollar plane and has made over $100,000,000 between the years of 1994 to 2003 off only 11 of his movies.
12) John Travolta
Long time movie star and Oscar nominated John Travolta was born Feb 18, 1954 in Englewood, New Jersey. Travolta dropped out of school at the young age of 16 and went on to building his career in movies. Travolta is best known for his movies like Look Who’s Talking, Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Wild Hogs, Face Off and many more. From the years 1994 to 2007 John Travolta had cleared over $100,000,000 from only 15 films he’s been in.
13) Chris Rock
Born on February 7, 1966 in Andrews South, California had a real rag to riches story. Rock ended up dropping out of school at the age of 17 to pursue his dream of being a comedian. Chris Rock has appeared in a number of movies like CB4, Down To Earth and also known for his TV show “Everybody Hates Chris”. Between the years of 1987 to the year of 1998 Chris Rock had made about $2,011,600 off his older films and this does not include recent films he has been in.
14) Tom Petty
Tom Petty famous musician from many bands but best known for “Tom Petty and the Heart Breakers” was born October 20, 1950 in Gainesville, Florida had dropped out of high school at the age of 17 to join the band “Mud crutch”. After years of writing and producing music Tom Petty had made millions and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in 2002.
15) Joe Pesci
Movie star and Oscar winner Joe Pesci was born February 9, 1943 in Newark, New Jersey. Joe dropped out of high school somewhere between the ages 15-18 years old and is best known for most of his roles in gangster movies like Good Fellows, Casino, Raging Bull and other movies like Home Alone and many more. In 1998 Joe Pesci had made $3,000,000 alone from just his role in Lethal Weapon.
16) Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison is probably the most famous and productive inventor of all time, with more than 1,000 patents in his name, including the electric light bulb, phonograph, and motion picture camera. He became a self-made multimillionaire and won a Congressional Gold Medal. Edison got a late start in his schooling following an illness, and, as a result, his mind often wandered, prompting one of his teachers to call him "addled. " He dropped out after only three months of formal education. Luckily, his mother had been a schoolteacher in Canada and home-schooled young Edison.
17) Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin wore many hats: politician, diplomat, author, printer, publisher, scientist, inventor, founding father, and coauthor and cosigner of the Declaration of Independence. One thing he was not was a high school graduate. Franklin was the fifteenth child and youngest son in a family of 20. He spent two years at the Boston Latin School before dropping out at age ten and going to work for his father, and then his brother, as a printer.
18) Bill Gates
Bill Gates is a co-founder of the software giant Microsoft and has been ranked the richest person in the world for a number of years. He has been named the richest person in the world by Forbes magazine 27 times. Bill Gates, who was 10 points away from a perfect score on the SAT, enrolled at Harvard College in 1973 only to take a leave of absence two years later to form a partnership with classmate Paul Allen. Gates dropped out in his junior year after reading an article about the Altair microcomputer in Popular Electronics magazine. He and his friend Paul Allen formed Micro Soft (later changed to Microsoft) to write software for the Altair. After more than 30 years, Microsoft is still one of the largest software companies in the world. In 2007, Bill Gates received an honorary doctorate degree from Harvard University. In 2009, Forbes reports Gates’ net worth at $40 billion
19) Albert Einstein
Although he was named Time magazine's "Man of the Century," Albert Einstein was not an "Einstein" in school. The Nobel Prize-winning physicist, famous for his theory of relativity and contributions to quantum theory and statistical mechanics, dropped out of high school at age 15. Deciding to continue his education a year later, Einstein took the entrance exam to the prestigious Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, but failed. He returned to high school, got his diploma, and then passed the university's entrance exam on his second attempt.
20) John D. Rockefeller
Two months before his high school graduation, history's first recorded billionaire, John D. Rockefeller, Sr. , dropped out to take business courses at Folsom Mercantile College. He founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870 (the first multinational corporation, in 1870), made his billions before the company was broken up by the government for being a monopoly, (the Supreme Court broke up the company in 1911 stating the company had violated anti-trust law creating a monopoly) and spent his last 40 years giving away his riches, primarily to causes related to health and education. Ironically, this high school dropout helped millions get a good education. He was the first American billionaire and is said to be the richest man in history.
21) Walt Disney
In 1918, while still in high school, future Oscar-winning film producer and theme park pioneer Walt Disney began taking night courses at the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago. Disney dropped out of high school at age 16 to join the army, but because he was too young to enlist, he joined the Red Cross with a forged birth certificate instead. Disney was sent to France where he drove an ambulance that was covered from top to bottom with cartoons that eventually became his film characters. After becoming the multimillionaire founder of the Walt Disney Company and winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Disney received an honorary high school diploma at age 58.
22) Richard Branson
Britain's Sir Richard Branson is a self-made billionaire businessman. He founded Virgin Atlantic Airways, Virgin Records, Virgin Mobile, and most recently, a space tourism company to provide suborbital trips into space for anyone who can afford them. Suffering from dyslexia, Branson was a poor student, so he quit school at age 16 and moved to London, where he began his first successful entrepreneurial activity, publishing Student magazine.
23) George Burns
George Burns, born Nathan Birnbaum, was a successful vaudeville, TV, and movie comedian for nearly nine decades. After his father's death, Burns left school in the fourth grade to go to work shining shoes, running errands, and selling newspapers. While employed at a local candy shop, Burns and his young coworkers decided to go into show business as the Peewee Quartet. After the group broke up, Burns continued to work with a partner, usually a girl, and was the funny one in the group until he met Gracie Allen in 1923. Burns and Allen got married, but didn't become stars until George flipped the act and made Gracie the funny one. They continued to work together in vaudeville, radio, television, and movies until Gracie retired in 1958. Burns continued performing almost until the day he died in March 1996.
24) Colonel Sanders
Colonel Harland Sanders overcame his lack of education to become the biggest drumstick in the fried chicken business. His father died when he was six years old, and since his mother worked, he was forced to cook for his family. After dropping out of elementary school, Sanders worked many jobs, including firefighter, steamboat driver, and insurance salesman. He later earned a law degree from a correspondence school. Sanders' cooking and business experience helped him make millions as the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken (now KFC).
25) Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens, author of numerous classics including Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, and A Christmas Carol, attended elementary school until his life took a twist of its own when his father was imprisoned for debt. At age 12, he left school and began working ten-hour days in a boot-blacking factory. Dickens later worked as a law clerk and a court stenographer. At age 22, he became a journalist, reporting parliamentary debate and covering election campaigns for a newspaper. His first collection of stories, Sketches by Boz (Boz was his nickname), was published in 1836 and led to his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, in March 1836.
26) Elton John
Born Reginald Kenneth Dwight, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Sir Elton John has sold more than 250 million records and has more than 50 Top 40 hits, making him one of the most successful musicians of all time. At age 11, Elton entered London's Royal Academy of Music on a piano scholarship. Bored with classical compositions, Elton preferred rock 'n' roll and after five years he quit school to become a weekend pianist at a local pub. At 17, he formed a band called Bluesology, and, by the mid-1960s, they were touring with soul and R&B musicians such as the Isley Brothers and Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles. The album Elton John was released in the spring of 1970 and, after the first single "Your Song" made the U. S. Top Ten, Elton was on his way to superstardom.
27) Ray Kroc
Ray Kroc didn't found McDonald's, but he turned it into the world's largest fast-food chain after purchasing the original location from Dick and Mac McDonald. Kroc amassed a $500 million fortune during his lifetime, and in 2000 was included in Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential builders and titans of industry in the 20th century. During World War I, Kroc dropped out of high school at age 15 and lied about his age to become a Red Cross ambulance driver, but the war ended before he was sent overseas.
28) Harry Houdini
The name Houdini is synonymous with magic. Before becoming a world-renowned magician and escape artist named Harry Houdini, Ehrich Weiss dropped out of school at age 12, working several jobs, including locksmith's apprentice. At 17, he teamed up with fellow magic enthusiast Jack Hayman to form the Houdini Brothers, named after Jean Eugène Robert Houdin, the most famous magician of the era. By age 24, Houdini had come up with the Challenge Act, offering to escape from any pair of handcuffs produced by the audience. The Challenge Act was the turning point for Houdini. With its success came the development of the spectacular escapes that would make him a legend.
29) Ringo Starr
Richard Starkey is better known as Ringo Starr, the drummer of the Beatles. Born in Liverpool in 1940, Ringo suffered two serious illnesses at age six. First, his appendix ruptured, leaving him in a coma for ten weeks. After six months in recovery, he fell out of the hospital bed, necessitating an additional six-month hospital stay. After spending a total of three years in a hospital, he was considerably behind in school. He dropped out after his last visit to the hospital at age 15, barely able to read or write. While working at an engineering firm, 17-year-old Starkey joined a band and taught himself to play the drums. His stepfather bought him his first real drum set, and Ringo sat in with a variety of bands, eventually joining Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He changed his name to Ringo Starr, joined the Beatles in 1962, and is now one of the best-known drummers in history.
30) Princess Diana
The late Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales, attended West Heath Girls' School where she was regarded as an academically below-average student, having failed all of her O-level examinations (exams given to 16-year-old students in the UK to determine their education level). At age 16, she left West Heath and briefly attended a finishing school in Switzerland before dropping out from there as well. Diana was a talented amateur singer and reportedly longed to be a ballerina. Diana went to work as a part-time assistant at the Young England Kindergarten, a day care center and nursery school. Contrary to claims, she was not a kindergarten teacher since she had no educational qualifications to teach, and Young England was not a kindergarten, despite its name. In 1981, at age 19, Diana became engaged to Prince Charles and her working days were over.
31) Mary Kay Ash
Mary Kay Ash attended college but dropped out after she got married. She started Mary Kay Cosmetics after being passed over for a promotion that was given to a man who she’d trained. The company started as a book Mark Kay intended to help women and turned into a business plan. With the help of her son and $5,000, Mary Kay Cosmetics was created. Mary Kay Inc. was named one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work for in America and one of the 10 best companies for women.
32) Halle Berry
Halle Berry is an Oscar-winning actress who never went to college. Instead, she moved to Chicago immediately after high school to become a model and actress. She ranked #66 on Forbes’ Celebrity 100 in 2006 and reportedly made $16 million that year. Berry is also a spokeswoman for Revlon cosmetics and was able to command a higher advertising fee after winning an Academy Award.
33) Henry Ford
Henry Ford never graduated high school, but went on to start one of the largest automobile manufacturing companies in the world, Ford Motor Company. He’s also credited as being the first auto manufacturer to use an assembly line, completely revolutionizing the way cars were produced. The assembly line allowed Ford sell cars at a lower price but the company kept making higher profit because sales volumes continually increased. Time called Ford one of the most influential people of the 20th century.
34) Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the social networking site Facebook #785 in the World’s Billionaires ranks #321 on Forbes’ list of 400 richest Americans. Born in 1984, Mark had an estimated net worth of $1. 5 billion in 2008 and is the youngest person ever to appear on one of Forbes’ billionaire lists. He developed Facebook one year on summer vacation after borrowing money from Paypal’s co-founder Peter Theil. In 2008, Microsoft paid $240 million for 1. 6% share of Facebook, leading us to believe the site is worth $15 billion.
35) Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg, is a movie director and producer. Spielberg was denied acceptance to film school and dropped out of California State University in Long Beach. He co-founded DreamWorks, a major film studio that’s produced several of the highest grossing movie hits and Academy award winning films. Spielberg ranked #205 on Forbes 2009 list of world billionaires with a net worth of $3 billion. He was later granted an honorary degree by USC in 1994.
36) Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson, is most-known for being the 6th president of the United States, but was also a military governor, Army commander, an attorney, and a congressman – all without ever going to college.
37) Rachel Ray
Rachel Ray hasn’t had any formal culinary training, including college, but has several cooking shows on the Food Network, a talk show on NBC, several New York Times bestselling cookbooks, and her own magazine. She got her start teaching cooking classes to customers at Cowan & Lobel, a gourmet market in Albany, New York. The classes showed customers how to cook meals in 30 minutes or less. In 2008, Forbes. com ranked Rachel Ray #76 in Celebrity 100, reporting her earnings at $18 million a year.
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