95 People Who Dropped Out Of College And Became Millionaires Anyway

Although Diana Spencer, the princess of Wales, was an accomplished musician and philanthropist, she was not exactly a top student. She struggled at West Heath Girls’ School and even failed her O-level exams. Things didn’t get much better for her when she moved on to a school in Switzerland, as she ended up dropping out there too. For a while, she had to rely on mundane jobs to get by, but she rose to fame by using her royal status to make a positive impact on the world.

In the late 1960s, Steven Spielberg left Cal State Long Beach to focus on his TV directing career. After racking up three Oscars, he returned to school and eventually graduated from Long Beach in 2002.

Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, is probably the most famous college dropout of all time. He attended Reed College in Oregon for just one semester before he had to leave due to a lack of funds. In a 1991 speech at the school, Steve admitted, “I ran out of money.”

The award-winning movie master Quentin Tarantino said goodbye to Narbonne High in Harbor City, California, at age 15. He found himself working as an usher at an adult film theater while taking acting lessons when he could.

Steve Wozniak, one of Apple’s co-founders, said he didn’t really “drop out” of UC Berkeley — he just took a break to earn some cash for his fourth year of college and didn’t return for more than a decade. Despite the lengthy pause, he eventually earned his bachelor’s degree from Berkeley in 1986.

In the 90s, Alicia Keys ditched her studies at Columbia University after just four weeks to snag a music deal with Columbia Records, as she revealed in an Oprah Magazine interview. And we all know how that turned out — she went on to win an insane number of Grammys!

Lady Gaga, a winner of both Grammys and an Oscar, attended New York University’s Tisch drama school in the late 2000s but didn’t graduate.

Eddie Murphy attended New York’s Nassau Community College for a hot minute, but his comical soul got him recognition and launched his career as a comedy superstar. At just 19 years old, he became a household name thanks to his hilarious sketches and impressions on the iconic Saturday Night Live show.

Tom Hanks decided to drop out of university after studying theater for two years. He took an internship with a theater company in Ohio, where he spent years learning about all aspects of theater production. Hanks enjoyed watching theater shows and became familiar with famous playwrights. Six years after starting with the company, he finally got his big break with the film Splash.

Oscar-winning director, screenwriter, and producer James Cameron quit Fullerton College in 1974, where he used to study physics.

Bill Gates, the business magnate and philanthropist, took a break from Harvard after his second year and returned for a bit before finally dropping out for good after his third year. Both times, he decided to leave school to put all of his energy into his company, Microsoft, which he co-founded in 1975.

In the 90s, Ashton Kutcher was all set to become a biochemical engineer at the University of Iowa. But then he had a change of heart and decided to try his hand at modeling instead. And that choice ended up leading him to act and invest in tech. As he told Newsweek, “I pursued something I was passionate about, and I haven’t felt like I’ve worked a day even though I work every day. That was the right decision for me.”

Hunter College revealed that before becoming a famous actor, Vin Diesel was an English major at their New York campus in the late 80s. However, he left school to follow his dreams of acting.

James Dean started his college journey at UCLA as a pre-law transfer student from Santa Monica College. However, he quickly switched his major to drama, landed a role in a UCLA production of “Macbeth,” received a less-than-stellar review, and decided to give the New York stage a shot after dropping out.

At 16, Walt Disney decided he had had enough of school and quit. He created a wildly successful company that rakes in around $30 billion every year. And on top of that, he went on to become the greatest animator of all time.

Brad Pitt, actor and producer with two Oscars under his belt, dropped out of the University of Missouri two weeks before graduating with a journalism degree and headed straight to LA. As he told “Fresh Air,” he was just “done” with college and knew where he wanted to go.

Jack Dorsey, the mastermind behind Twitter and Square, couldn’t seem to stick with college. He left the Missouri University of Science and Technology in his junior year and NY University before graduation to pursue a short-lived project. At one point, Dorsey admitted to feeling like a failure in his mid-20s.

Madonna, queen of pop and dance floor royalty, is also a college dropout, having studied at the University of Michigan for a couple of years before heading to the bright lights of New York. Who could have imagined leaving higher education behind for a music career would turn our girl Madge into a household name?

You may not believe it, but the famous businessman Richard Branson started by quitting school and launching a magazine called “Student.” Later, he moved to London and started a record company called Virgin to finance his magazine. Fast forward to today, and Branson’s empire includes an airline, a drinks company, and over 400 ventures.

David Geffen wasn’t exactly a college success story. He left the University of Texas at Austin after only a few months, according to PBS. However, that didn’t stop him from co-founding DreamWorks with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

John Lennon was more interested in making music than getting good grades. In fact, he failed all of his high school exams and barely managed to get into art school. He was eventually kicked out due to his behavior. Regardless, he became a wildly successful musician and cultural icon.

Despite only completing a single year of formal schooling, Abraham Lincoln was determined to become a lawyer. He taught himself trigonometry and delved into Blackstone on his own. Eventually, he achieved his goal and became a successful lawyer and later the 16th POTUS.

Tiger Woods, just like many other top-notch athletes, decided to drop out of college (Stanford, in his case) in his second year to focus on sports full-time. However, in 2016 he admitted that not finishing college was his only regret in life.

Sofia Vergara, known for her dazzling smile on the red carpet, originally attended dental school in her home country, Colombia. However, as revealed in a talk show appearance in 2016, she didn’t complete her studies.

Rachel Lim, a Singaporean fashion mogul and co-founder of Love, Bonito, was about to graduate from Nanyang Technological University when she decided to take a chance on her emerging brand. As she struggled to balance school and work, she realized it was time to focus on one thing. CNBC has described Love, Bonito as a “multimillion-dollar” brand.

In 2017, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, gave a commencement speech at Harvard University, which he had dropped out of in 2005 to work on his burgeoning social media company.

According to his biography, Ralph Lauren, the man behind the iconic Polo brand, left college after only two years to join the US Army.

Just like James Dean before him, Paul Newman left Yale University to chase his dreams in New York City. Both men later rose to fame for their acting roles and use of method acting techniques, which they helped bring into mainstream popularity.

Bonnie Raitt, daughter of Broadway legend John Raitt, was an African studies student at Harvard’s Radcliffe College when she got swept up in the blues music scene. This led to her taking a break from college to tour with the Rolling Stones in 1970. She initially told Radcliffe that she would only be taking a one-year leave of absence, but as it turns out, things didn’t go quite as planned. The Grammy winner ended up leaving college for good to pursue her music career.

R. Buckminster Fuller, the mastermind behind the geodesic dome, was a two-time college dropout who couldn’t seem to follow the rules. According to his official biography, he was kicked out of Harvard in 1914 for “excessive socializing” and missing exams. After being readmitted the following year, he was expelled again.

Before causing a stir as a computer hacker, Julian Assange was a math student at the University of Melbourne. However, it didn’t take long for his rebellious streak to show — he dropped out at the young age of 19 due to his opposition to his classmates working on computer projects for the Australian military.

Henry Ford, who quit school at 16, started the Ford Motor Company in 1903. In 1908, he introduced the Model T and the assembly line, which had a massive impact on our lives and changed the world. If he were still alive today, he would have a net worth of $199 billion.

Kat Cole, the ex-president of Focus Brands (the parent company of Cinnabon and Auntie Anne’s), had to drop out of the University of North Florida when she was 20 because she had a lot going on with Hooters, where she started working as a teenager. Although she never finished her bachelor’s degree, she got an MBA when she became a VP at Hooters in her mid-20s.

Harry Truman became the second president of the United States in the 20th century to have never earned a degree. He attended a business school in Kansas City, Missouri, for a semester and took night classes at the Kansas City Law School but didn’t graduate from either.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s college career was brief but impactful. He took part-time classes at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for a hot minute (just two semesters), but that was enough to spark his interest in architecture. Little did he know, he’d become one of the most famous architects of all time, designing iconic buildings like the Guggenheim Museum in New York City and earning the title of the greatest architect of the 20th century.

Jamaica Kincaid was on her way to becoming a famous author when she decided to also take some photography classes at the New School in New York City at night. She even went to Franconia College in New Hampshire but eventually left to focus on writing. As she put it, “I thought maybe I should go to college,” but her passion for writing couldn’t be ignored.

Larry Page, one of the founders of Google, didn’t finish his Ph.D. That didn’t stop him from helping to create a company worth over $220 billion — Alphabet Inc., aka Google’s parent company.

Gabe Newell is a co-founder of Valve Corporation, the company behind the popular sci-fi video game Half-Life. Newell boasts about being the “producer of the first three releases of Windows,” and, just like Zuckerberg and Gates, he also dropped out of Harvard.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, the genius behind The Great Gatsby, might not be the first person you think of when you think of college dropouts. But yeah, even he couldn’t cut it at Princeton and had to leave due to his low grades.

Sophia Amoruso had a rough time in high school and eventually dropped out. In 2006, she decided to start an eBay store selling vintage women’s clothing, which turned out to be a good one! Her edgy fashion retailer, Nasty Gal, is now a multimillion-dollar business.

Oprah Winfrey, the famous media mogul and philanthropist, left Tennessee State University in 1975 just one credit short of graduating. After launching her talk show and getting an Oscar nomination, she decided it was time to get back to the books and resumed her studies.

Daniel Ek is the mastermind behind Spotify, serving as its CEO and founder. According to Forbes, Ek was a student at Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology but only lasted two months before dropping out.

Quincy Jones left the Berklee College of Music to join the legendary Lionel Hampton for a jazz gig. He initially planned to return to school but eventually realized that “when you go with a band like that, you never go back,” according to Jones himself in an NPR interview.

William McKinley, one of the few presidents in the 20th century who didn’t finish college, attended Allegheny College in Pennsylvania. It’s unclear why he didn’t graduate, but the school reports that he considered not having a degree one of his biggest regrets.

Paul Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft and former owner of the Seattle Seahawks, had a pretty impressive career. He left Washington State University to land a job in Boston, where his friend Bill Gates was studying at Harvard. He passed away in 2018.

Paula Abdul, the famous Grammy-winning TV host and dancer, attended Cal State Northridge in the 1980s and studied broadcast journalism. During her time there, she was also a cheerleader for the Los Angeles Lakers. However, she left before graduating to focus on her growing dance and choreography career.

Steve Madden, a successful footwear designer and fashion mogul, admitted to CBS News that his college experience at the University of Miami was short-lived. He dropped out after his dad stopped paying his tuition and told him to find a job instead.

Michael Dell, the tech tycoon, was so eager to focus on his successful computing company that he didn’t even finish two semesters at the University of Texas before dropping out.

Ted Turner, the brain behind CNN and former owner of the Atlanta Braves, was given the boot from Brown University for sneaking a woman into his dorm room. But that didn’t stop him from taking over his dad’s advertising business and turning it into a mega-successful company after his father tragically took his own life.

Evan Williams, a former farm boy from Clarks, Nebraska, ditched his studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln to become a freelance software programmer for tech giants Hewlett-Packard and Intel. Eventually, he landed a job at Google, but his real claim to fame came when he left Google to create Twitter, which turned him into a billionaire.

Meet Kirk Kerkorian, the person behind Las Vegas’s glitzy atmosphere and a man of many hats (or, rather, many professions). Despite never finishing eighth grade, Kirk made a name for himself as a boxer, fighter pilot, and CEO of Tracinda, an investment company. But it’s his contributions to the development of Sin City that truly cement him as the “father of the megaresort.”

Matt Mullenweg, the man behind WordPress, initially pursued political science at the University of Houston before dropping out to focus on coding. He began working on a project with some friends that eventually evolved into WordPress, the go-to platform for online blogging. CNET took notice and asked Matt to join forces, leading him to leave school and continue perfecting the service. Later, he founded Automatic, a company that operates various websites along with WordPress.

Arash Ferdowsi is known for creating the popular file storage site Dropbox. He came up with the idea while attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he co-founded the company with a business partner. However, Arash knew that Dropbox had the potential to be even bigger, but he was held back by his location. So, he decided to ditch MIT and head to San Francisco to raise money for his site. And it definitely paid off!

Meet Anne Beiler, the high school dropout who went on to strike ‘dough-llar’ bills as the co-founder of Auntie Anne’s Pretzels and became a multi-millionaire.

Ted Murphy, the creator of the social media platform IZEA, bid farewell to college life to embark on a journey of entrepreneurship success.

Simon Cowell is the brains behind the hit shows The X Factor and Got Talent. He started as a mailroom worker for a music publishing company and has now risen to become a top A&R executive for Sony BMG in the UK and a successful television producer.

George Foreman, the two-time heavyweight champion of the world and successful businessman, may not have finished high school, but that didn’t stop him from joining the Job Corps in 1965, where he discovered his true calling as a boxer.

Dean Kamen is a creative genius and inventor who decided to leave Worcester Polytechnic Institute before getting his degree. Despite being famous for the Segway PT, Kamen has over 80 patents to his name and has come up with tons of innovative products like the AutoSyringe and the iBOT robotic wheelchair.

Barbara Lynch is a chef and owner of several restaurants in Boston. Her empire is worth $10 million.

Rachael Ray, TV talk show host and Food Network star, decided to leave Pace University in New York after two years due to the high cost of tuition. In an interview with Vanity Fair, she said she felt like she was going to school for hobbies. She then took a job at the candy counter at Macy’s.

The San Francisco Chronicle asked JetBlue Airways founder David Neeleman where he got his education, and he replied, “I was at the University of Utah, but I dropped out.” Neeleman was apparently an excellent student before he left school to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams. His mission trip to Brazil opened his eyes and made him want to start his own travel company instead of finishing school.

H. Wayne Huizenga, the mastermind behind Blockbuster and former owner of three professional sports teams (including the Miami Dolphins), was a college dropout from Calvin College in Michigan.

Ryan Seacrest attended UGA for a year to study journalism but decided to drop out in 1992 to focus on his future career as a radio and TV personality. It looks like that decision paid off because now he’s a big deal in the media world!

Travis Kalanick’s parents were disappointed when he dropped out of UCLA, but they knew he’d figure something out. And boy, did he ever! In 2009, he co-created Uber, the ride-hailing giant that’s now the go-to for millions of people worldwide.

In the 1970s, Johnny Chan — the legendary poker pro — was attending the University of Houston to study hotel and restaurant management. However, he couldn’t handle the idea of a 9-to-5 grind and dropped out at 21. As he told New Times, “The action always gets me. The action makes me who I am.”

Dustin Moskovitz, together with Mark Zuckerberg, left Harvard to focus on their creation, Facebook. Moskovitz mentioned in an interview with Startups.com that they didn’t plan to leave permanently. Still, they eventually realized that running such a company while also being full-time students seemed like an unrealistic mission.

Micky Arison was living college life at the University of Miami until he decided to ditch class to help his dad, Ted Arison, run the one and only Carnival Cruise Lines. Micky’s hard work paid off, and he ended up on multiple lists of the world’s wealthiest people. As the owner of the Miami Heat, he also got to celebrate winning three NBA Finals championships.

Larry Ellison, businessman and investor, is one of the masterminds behind the success of Oracle Corporation. Despite not finishing his degree at the University of Chicago, he’s still managed to rack up billions and even have an island in Hawaii named after him.

Jan Koum left school early in 1997 to start working for Yahoo and created WhatsApp. Facebook eventually bought his app for a whopping $19 billion, earning him a personal profit of $6.8 billion.

John Mackey was a student at the University of Texas, where he studied religion and philosophy. However, he eventually dropped out and used a loan of $45,000 to start a health food store called SaferWay in Austin. This store eventually grew into the massive organic grocery chain we now know as Whole Foods.

Haim Saban hit the jackpot as the producer behind the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers TV series in the 90s. He later sold Fox Family to Disney for $5 billion, making a cool $1.7 billion in the process.

Sean Parker is the man who co-founded Napster, the revolutionary music-sharing platform that completely transformed the music biz. After that, he became the first president of Facebook, owning 28.2% of its B shares.

Orji Uzor Kalu, a Nigerian-born billionaire and war survivor, made a fortune in the television and media industry. He worked hard for success after being expelled from college for inciting student riots.

Wolfgang Puck is a prime example of how dedication and hard work can lead to success. After dropping out of school, he became an apprentice at a Monaco kitchen, where he spent long hours perfecting his skills. His dedication paid off when he moved to the US at 24, and within two years, he became a co-owner of Ma Maison in Los Angeles.

Despite not finishing high school, Amadeo Giannini became a millionaire when he founded the Bank of Italy, which eventually became the Bank of America. He’s also known for inventing numerous banking practices.

Andrew Carnegie was an industrialist and philanthropist who quit elementary school and led the US steel industry expansion. He was one of the first American mega-billionaires.