Billionaires Who Dropped Out Of High School?

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Billionaires Who Dropped Out Of High School
Can a high school dropout become a millionaire? – Yes, a high school dropout can become a millionaire. Many famous entrepreneurs, such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Michael Dell, all dropped out of high school and went on to become incredibly successful and wealthy.

However, it is important to note that these individuals are outliers, and their success was due to their hard work, resilience, and networking. Furthermore, these individuals had access to financial resources from their families that allowed them to pursue their entrepreneurial paths. For a high school dropout who does not have these advantages, the road to becoming a millionaire can be much more difficult, although it can still be done.

First, it is important to gain new skills, not just through attending education sessions and webinars, but by gaining experience in a particular field. Having a network of people with knowledge and experience in that field can help tremendously; this can be done through often attending trade or professional conferences and other events.

  1. Another important step is to be proactive in acquiring and managing personal finances, such as saving, investing, and budgeting.
  2. An understanding of basic financial and investment matters can reduce the risk of making costly mistakes and provide a foundation upon which to secure one’s future.
  3. It has been said that it takes money to make money, and having access to financial resources is often essential in starting a business, so it is important to secure financing such as angel investments and venture capital if the goal is to become a millionaire.

Ultimately, becoming a millionaire will require hard work, dedication, entrepreneurship, and a bit of luck. A high school dropout can absolutely become a millionaire if they have the will and dedication to pursue their goals and make the necessary investments along the way.
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Who is the most successful high school dropout?

Billionaires Who Dropped Out Of High School Most people are familiar with some of the more legendary high school dropouts who became wildly successful before they died. – McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc and Walt Disney both left high school to pursue other interests that became globally-recognized brands.

  1. Henry Ford and Coco Chanel never finished high school, but they also created enduring brand names that outlasted their lifetimes.
  2. There are also some amazingly high profile entrepreneurs and business people alive today who chose to leave college to follow their dreams.
  3. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Michael Dell of Dell Computers all chose to leave college to create wildly successful businesses that changed the world.

Even some of the world’s literary greats never finished school. Did you know that Harper Lee, Charles Dickens, H.G. Wells, and Mark Twain dropped out of school? Kids are told from a young age to stay in school and study hard so they can get a good job.

David Karp dropped out of Bronx Science High School at the age of 15. His original plans were to continue homeschooling and work on other side projects. However, he never got his high school diploma. He ended up building the short-form blogging and social networking platform known as Tumblr in the back bedroom of his mother’s apartment, which he has since sold to Yahoo! for $1.1 billion., Quentin Tarantino left Narbonne High School at age 15 to work at an adult film theater. Later, he took a job in a video rental store while he took acting classes. He wrote several movie scripts in his spare time based around his love of movies and went on to become a screenwriter.,

Drew Barrymore may have dropped out of high school, but technically she’s been working consistently since she was just 11 months old, so she could be forgiven. While she may be widely known for her high-profile acting roles, Drew is also a highly successful businesswoman in her own right.,

Sir Richard Branson dropped out of Stowe High School at just 16 to start a magazine. By the age of 20 the entrepreneur founded a mail-order record company that expanded to become Virgin Records.,

Carl Lindner, Jr dropped out of high school when he was just 14 so he could deliver milk for his family’s dairy farm. He borrowed some money to start an ice cream shop with his siblings. He used his entrepreneurial skills to build a business empire and invest heavily to build his estimated $1.7 billion fortune.,

Jay-Z grew up in one of the roughest housing projects in Brooklyn. Originally known as Shawn Carter, Jay-Z, never graduated from high school. That didn’t stop the multi-Grammy Award-winning hip-hop artist going on to become a successful entrepreneur.,

Uma Thurman left high school at just 16 to pursue an acting career. She worked as a model before being spotted by talent scouts at a drama school and went on to become one of Hollywood’s leading female actresses.,

George Foreman left school at the age of 15 to pursue a career in boxing. He went on to become a two-time world heavy-weight champion and an Olympic gold medalist. When he retired from boxing, he jumped into the world of business, becoming the spokesperson for the George Foreman Grill.,

Robert De Niro left high school at 16 to study acting. He has become a hugely successful actor who has starred in more than 90 films. He’s also a successful businessman, with a chain of eateries across New York and his own film studio.,

Katy Perry left high school at the age of 15 to pursue a career as a musical artist. Her career began with gospel music as a Christian singer, but she reinvented herself to emerge as one of the world’s most successful female pop superstars.,

There are plenty of success stories circulating about regular people who dropped out of high school and went on to become millionaires. However, it’s also worth noting that 81% of the Forbes 400 richest people hold college degrees. The common thread running through each of the stories of successful dropouts is that they all had a strong ambition to achieve a specific goal that didn’t fit the traditional academic high school mold.
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Was Elon Musk a dropout?

At the age of 24, Musk started a doctoral program in physics at Stanford in 1995 but dropped out after two days. Earlier this month, the Tesla Inc. founder tweeted about a letter he received from a Stanford professor telling him about the cutting-edge research he missed out on.
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Did Elon Musk drop out of high school?

Education – Musk graduated from in South Africa. Musk attended,, and, from which he graduated. Musk applied for a Canadian passport his Canadian-born mother, knowing that it would be easier to immigrate to the United States this way. While waiting for his application to be processed, he attended the for five months.

  • Musk arrived in Canada in June 1989 and lived with a second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year, working odd jobs at a farm and lumber mill.
  • In 1990, he entered in,
  • Two years later, he transferred to the (UPenn), where he completed studies for a degree in physics and a degree in economics from the,
  • Although Musk claims he earned the degrees in 1995, UPenn maintains it awarded them in 1997.

He reportedly hosted large, ticketed house parties to help pay for tuition, and wrote a business plan for an electronic book-scanning service similar to, In 1994, Musk held two internships in : one at the energy storage startup Pinnacle Research Institute, which investigated electrolytic for energy storage, and another at the –based startup,
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Did Jeff Bezos dropout?

Jeff Bezos –

College: Princeton University

Former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is one of the richest people in the world and, according to Forbes, is the first billionaire to break the 12-figure mark. The son of a single mother, Bezos earned early admission to Princeton, originally intending to practice theoretical physics.
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Which school has the most billionaire?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Counting all degrees, Harvard University comes in first place in terms of the total number of billionaire alumni. The University of Pennsylvania comes in first if only bachelor’s degrees are counted, according to the most recent 2022 Forbes report.

  1. Harvard also ranks first in the number of ultra-high net worth alumni with assets greater than $30 million.
  2. Harvard’s total number of ultra-high net worth alumni is more than twice that of the next highest ranking institution, Stanford,
  3. These figures have not been adjusted for the relative size of these institutions.

The list is dominated by US universities, which account for all of the global top 10 universities by number of billionaire alumni.
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How old was Mark Zuckerberg when he dropped out?

Like Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, 37 (pictured with his wife Priscilla Chan), dropped out of Harvard before making his fortune.
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Which billionaire is uneducated?

Meet Nikhil Kamath, a school dropout at 14, now India’s youngest billionaire at 34. After dropping out of school, Nikhil starting working at a call centre for Rs 8000.
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Which billionaire is not educated?

Most U.S. billionaires have a college degree, but these self-made superstars built their fortunes with just a high school diploma, if even that. – J immy John Liautaud opened the first Jimmy John’s sandwich shop in January 1983, just a few months after he graduated from high school.

  1. Liutaud’s Army veteran father gave him a choice of enlisting or starting a business after high school.
  2. He chose the latter.
  3. Liautaud had a hard time in his high school classes because of undiagnosed dyslexia.
  4. He was “a real street kid,” he says of growing up in Cary, Illinois, which taught him a lot about hierarchy, honor and “the efficiency of being straight up.” “You’ve got to be straight up on the street,” Liautaud says, a lesson that he applies to being a successful businessman.

“When you say you’re gonna show up at three, you show up at three. When you say you’re gonna do something, you do it.” The business took off and, in 2016, Liautaud sold an estimated 65% stake in Jimmy John’s to private equity firm Roark Capital in a deal that valued the company at $3 billion.

  • He sold his remaining Jimmy John’s stake in 2019 to Inspire Brands, an arm of Roark Capital, for an undisclosed amount.
  • Now worth an estimated $1.7 billion, Liautaud is one of just 24, of about 700 American billionaires, who graduated from high school but never attended college (not including those who enrolled and dropped out like Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates).

Diane Hendricks, America’s richest self-made businesswoman, was forced to leave school at 17 after getting pregnant but made sure she got her GED. She married the father but the couple divorced three years later. The newly single mom got a job waitressing at a local Playboy Club and later sold real estate before cofounding roofing supplies distributor ABC Supply in 1982.

Not going to college, she says, made her more entrepreneurial. “I created my own learning opportunities. I found role models. I learned through doing and from my mistakes,” Hendricks says via email. “Pursuing a career is much more important than pursuing a degree.” Two of her seven children also opted out of college.

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“Both of my sons went right to work,” says Hendricks. “Our family believes strongly that all work, all jobs have value, regardless of whether they require a college degree.” Another notable high school grad who debuted among the country’s richest in recent years is MailChimp’s Dan Kurzius.

He was a part-time DJ, competitive skateboarder and worked in real estate before getting into web design with cofounder Ben Chestnut. Both he and Chestnut had witnessed the challenges faced by small businesses (his dad ran a bakery-deli that went bankrupt) and bootstrapped Mailchimp, never raising money from investors.

In September 2021, financial software giant Intuit announced it was buying Mailchimp for $12 billion in cash and stock. The wealthiest person in the country to have made a fortune without attending college is oil tycoon Harold Hamm. The youngest of 13 children, Hamm grew up on a farm in Oklahoma, picking cotton as a child and working at a gas station as a teenager.

He eventually started his own trucking company to haul water to oilfields, and by 1971, when Hamm was 25, had taken out a loan to drill his first well, kickstarting his oil drilling career. Currently chairman and CEO of oil producer Continental Resources, he is worth $21.1 billion and ranked 28th on the recently release list of the Forbes 400 richest Americans.

In addition to the two dozen billionaires who have only a high school degree, there are three billionaires who never even got a diploma: former hairdresser and founder of OGX hair care products Todd Christopher, cable TV pioneer Alan Gerry and Dole Foods’ David Murdock.

Though the wealth accumulated by these billionaires is anything but average, their educational attainment resembles that of many Americans. About 28% of Americans claim a high school diploma as their highest level of education, and nearly 9% never graduated high school. More than three-fifths of Americans haven’t completed a bachelor’s degree, according to 2022 U.S.

Census Bureau data, “College plays a part for sure,” says Liautaud, “But I think everything plays a part, and I don’t think it’s one big thing. I think it’s a thousand little things that make people successful”.
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Who is the youngest drop out billionaire?

Billionaires Who Dropped Out Of High School Alexandr Wang, 25, dropped out of MIT at the age of 19 to cofound Scale AI and has become the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. His parents were physicists who performed on military weapons developments and he is now continuing to follow in their path. Wang’s business AI is a 6-year-old company which has already signed three contracts worth up to $110 million.
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What is the IQ of Bill Gates?

The average IQ varies from country to country, with the US standing at 98. Anything above 130 is high. Here are some of the glimpses of genius that attest to Bill Gates’ high IQ, even to the point of being a 160 score.
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What was Bill Gates GPA?

Opinion: Why we should bid the anachronism of valedictorian farewell Elon Musk was not valedictorian in high school. Neither was Bill Gates whose 2.2 GPA at one point alarmed his parents. Ronald Reagan graduated with a C-average. None of these esteemed men were mediocre in intelligence or achievements, regardless of their high school grades.

  • Despite what Denver Post opinion columnist, high school rank is an irrelevant measure of success, especially when the individual distinction is often mere thousandths of a percentage point.
  • Critics of Cherry Creek School District’s decision to retire valedictorian titles and ranking students by GPA couldn’t be more wrong, and the district should be lauded, not maligned.

Rather than moving toward mediocrity, the district’s action acknowledges and honors widespread high achievement. Cherry Creek High School, the district’s flagship and arguably one of the top high schools in the nation, eliminated valedictorian and ranking of students more than 30 years ago.

  • The reason is that ranking can actually compromise and downplay the achievements of the school’s high number of extraordinary students.
  • Has Creek’s decades-old decision caused mediocrity in the school? Has that choice decreased Creek’s competitiveness? Of course not.
  • It’s laughable to think so.
  • Brauchler implied the next step for the district will be to no longer have grades or GPAs for college admissions.

It will, and the district continues to offer a large number of rigorous, nationally-aligned honors and AP classes, while also increasing the number of students challenging themselves. Brauchler mistakenly suggests rank is necessary for college admission.

It’s not. Grades, test scores, recommendations, college essays, and other factors make up a college application, and colleges rate students against their entire applicant pool, not their high school. Finally, the insinuation that Cherry Creek’s policy shift lowers standards and expectations is patently false.

Nothing has changed with curriculum, instruction, assessment, or achievement. My son, a Princeton sophomore, graduated from Cherry Creek with a 4.9 GPA and perfect scores on the ACT, yet was not valedictorian, nor did he need that title to honor his success.

His former classmates at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, and other elite programs also graduated from Creek without valedictorian status or class rank, and none expected nor needed either for college admission or to garner respect among their community. Cherry Creek produces dozens of National Merit Scholars each year, and at its Senior Awards ceremony, the “Principal’s Top Ten” list includes dozens of students because Creek produces so many high achievers with perfect 4.0 GPAs.

Clearly, there’s no such thing as a single top student, and publicly ranking them puts them at a disadvantage, which is why many elite schools nationwide also eliminated the practice. Thus, Cherry Creek School District is not moving toward mediocrity but instead joining other top programs in honoring students who achieve far beyond standards of the past.

  • Cherry Creek’s many high achievers represent a tradition of widespread excellence, and they aren’t just valued by a single percentage point.
  • Sid Mane, a Creek grad and U.S.
  • Presidential Scholar who currently attends Columbia University, is unimpressed with the case for valedictorian.
  • Mane explains that it makes a “claim which is incredibly out of touch,” noting GPA is still listed on transcripts and college apps and is unnecessary to compare students within the school.

Additionally, Mane says, “I’d actually contend class rank contributes to mediocrity since it discourages academic risk-taking.” Ranking can encourage kids to avoid hard classes out of fear of losing a decimal point. Instead, we want our kids to challenge themselves, competing nationwide against the best-of-the-best for admissions and awards, not against each other for a school crown.

  • Mane describes valedictorian as “a quaint tradition” at best.
  • A highly qualified voice on this issue, Craig Wittgrove, Post-Graduate Coordinator at Cherry Creek High School, explains “The competition for valedictorian and rank has always created gamesmanship and limited students from choosing courses based on growth and interest to instead choose what’s best to manipulate GPA.” He added that many elite, expensive “private schools choose not to rank, as there’s no proof of advantage in college admission, and it may actually limit the number of students admitted to an institution.” In other words, when schools have numerous extraordinary students, pitting them against each other by GPA can actually harm their post-graduate opportunities.

Washington Post education writer Valerie Strauss has studied the issue, sharing the insight of education scholar Alfie Kohn who notes, “The differences in GPA among high-achieving students are statistically insignificant. It’s, therefore, both pointless and misleading to single out the one (or ten) at the top.” Valedictorian titles and class rank are anachronisms that were put out to pasture at Cherry Creek High School decades ago.

  1. Sadly, many people misunderstand this.
  2. As an educator, former administrator, and past coordinator of gifted education, I’m disappointed by the crass misrepresentation of this issue to score cheap political points.
  3. Superintendent Chris Smith and the Cherry Creek School Board made the right call and the appropriate, well-informed decision that is in the best interest of kids.

Creek’s policy validates, deepens, and extends the tradition of excellence. Michael P. Mazenko is a Cherry Creek High School teacher, a former school administrator, and past gifted education coordinator. To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit or check out our for how to submit by email or mail.
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Did Bill Gates enjoy school?

Biography >> Entrepreneurs

Occupation: Entrepreneur, Chairman of Microsoft Born: October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington Best known for: Founder of Microsoft, one of the richest men in the world

Bill Gates Source: US Treasury Department Biography: Where did Bill Gates grow up? William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle, Washington on October 28, 1955. He was the middle child of William H. Gates II, a prominent Seattle lawyer, and Mary Gates, who worked as a teacher before she had kids.

  • Bill had an older sister, Kristi, and a younger sister, Libby.
  • Bill loved to play board games and was competitive at most everything he did.
  • He was an intelligent student and his best subject in grade school was math.
  • However, Bill got easily bored with school and ended up getting into trouble a lot.
  • His parents kept him occupied with outside activities like Boy Scouts (he earned his Eagle Scout badge) and reading science fiction books.

When Bill turned thirteen his parents sent him to the Lakeside Preparatory School hoping it would prove more of a challenge for him. It was at Lakeside where Bill met his future business partner Paul Allen. He also was introduced to computers at Lakeside.

Computers At the time when Bill was growing up, there weren’t home computers like the PC, the laptop, or the tablet like we have today. Computers were owned by large companies and took up lots of space. Lakeside school purchased time on one of these computers that the students could use. Bill found the computer fascinating.

The first computer program he wrote was a version of tic-tac-toe. At one point, Bill and some of his fellow students were banned from using the computer because they hacked it to get extra computing time. They then agreed to look for bugs in the computer system in return for computer time.

  • Later, while still in high school, Bill wrote a payroll program for a company and a scheduling program for his school.
  • He even started a business with his friend Paul Allen writing a computer program that helped to track traffic patterns in Seattle.
  • College After graduating from high school in 1973, Gates attended Harvard University.

At first he planned to study as a lawyer, but he continued to spend much of his time on computers. He also kept in touch with his friend Paul Allen who was working for Honeywell. When the Altair personal computer came out in 1974, Gates and Allen decided they could write a BASIC software program to run on the computer.

  • They called up Altair and told them they were working on the program.
  • Altair wanted a demonstration in a few weeks, but Gates hadn’t even started on the program.
  • He worked hard over the next month or so and, when they finally went to New Mexico to run the software, it worked perfectly the first time.
  • Starting Microsoft In 1975, Gates dropped out of Harvard to start a software company with Paul Allen called Microsoft.

The company was doing well, but it was in 1980 that Gates made a deal with IBM that would change computing. Microsoft reached a deal to provide the MS-DOS operating system on the new IBM PC. Gates sold the software to IBM for a fee of $50,000, however he held onto the copyright of the software. Bill Gates Source: U.S. Department of State Windows In 1985, Gates and Microsoft took another risk. They released the Microsoft Windows operating system. This was Microsoft’s answer to a similar operating system introduced by Apple in 1984. At first, many people complained that Microsoft Windows wasn’t as good as the Apple version.

However, Gates continued to press the open PC concept. Microsoft Windows could run on a variety of PC compatible machines, while the Apple operating system only ran on Apple machines. Microsoft won the operating system battle and was soon installed on nearly 90% of the world’s personal computers. Microsoft Grows Gates wasn’t satisfied with just winning the operating system portion of the software market.

Over the next few years he introduced new products such as Windows Office programs like Word and Excel. The company also introduced new and improved versions of Windows. World’s Richest Man In 1986, Gates took Microsoft public. The company’s stock was worth $520 million.

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Gates owned 45 percent of the stock himself which was worth $234 million. The company continued its rapid growth and the stock price soared. At one point, Gates’ stock was worth over $100 billion. He was the richest man in the world. Why was Bill Gates successful? Like most successful entrepreneurs, Bill Gates’ success came from a combination of hard work, intelligence, timing, business sense, and luck.

Gates constantly challenged his employees to work harder and innovate, but he also worked as hard or harder than the people who worked for him. Gates also wasn’t afraid to take risks. He took a risk when he dropped out of Harvard to start his own company.

He also took a risk when he changed Microsoft’s operating system from MS-DOS to Windows. However, his risks were calculated. He had confidence in himself and his product. Personal Life Gates married Melinda French in January of 1994. They have since had three children including two daughters and a son. In 2000, Gates and his wife formed the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Today, this is one of the largest charitable foundations in the world. Gates personally has donated over $28 billion to charity. Interesting Facts about Bill Gates

Bill’s nickname as a child was “Trey” which was given to him by his grandmother. He scored a 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT. At first Microsoft had a hyphen in the name “Micro-soft”. It was a combination of microcomputer and software. When Microsoft first started out, Gates would look at every line of code before a new software product shipped. In 2004, Gates predicted that email spam would be gone by 2006. He was wrong on that one! He was dubbed an honorary knight by Queen Elizabeth. He does not use the title “Sir” because he is not a citizen of the United Kingdom,

Activities Listen to a recorded reading of this page: Your browser does not support the audio element. More Entrepreneurs Works Cited Biography >> Entrepreneurs
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Why did Elon Musk quit PhD?

Elon Musk receives letter from his ‘almost’ Stanford professor. See post Tech giant Elon Musk has shared an old letter that he received from William D Nix, professor (Emeritus) at Stanford University. The billionaire wrote that Dr Nix would have been his professor if he hadn’t put his “Grad studies on (permanent) deferment”.

  • The introductory part of the letter revealed that the Stanford professor was responding to one of Musk’s interviews.
  • Dr Nix wrote, ” In a recent interview entitled: on the Early Days of Tesla: Interview Part 1, which was posted on YouTube, you mentioned meeting me at Stanford in 1995 as your prospective professor if you had enrolled in a graduate program at Stanford”.

According to Investopedia, Musk was 24 years old when he moved to California to pursue PhD in Applied Physics at Stanford University. However, with entrepreneurial vision dancing in his head, Musk left the PhD programme after just two days. He dropped out of the prestigious institute in 1995.

The CEO got admission to Stanford after bagging two bachelor’s degrees. Further, in the letter, the professor praised Musk’s description of the issues of using silicon for anodes for lithium batteries. The professor wrote, “About 10 years ago we at Stanford did research on the very issues you described.

Indeed, it almost seemed like you had read all of our papers. As a part of the work we did, we found that since the crumbling of Si on lithiation is associated with the amorphization of crystalline Si, less crumbling can be achieved by starting with amorphous Si in the first place.

Much larger Si particles can be lithiated without cracking if they are initially in the amorphous state. Using amorphous Si as particles in a carbon matrix might allow much higher volume fractions of Si to be loaded into carbon anodes. For all I know, someone may have already patented this idea”. As Musk posted the letter on Twitter, the comment section was swamped with various opinions.

One user commented, “Imagine you continued your studies instead of developing companies. You might be professor and There would be no Tesla, SpaceX or even PayPal. What a weird time line it would have been”. Imagine you continued your studies instead of developing companies.

You might be professor and There would be no Tesla, SpaceX or even PayPal. What a weird time line it would have been 🤔😅 — Kavinda Heshal (@KJHeshal) Another user wrote, “Very nice note. So nice when people take the time to write, or send thoughts like that. Usually those sentiments go unsaid, they matter.

When the heart speaks, share it. Hats off to Prof Nix for taking the time”. Very nice note. So nice when people take the time to write, or send thoughts like that. Usually those sentiments go unsaid, they matter. When the heart speaks, share it. Hats off to Prof Nix for taking the time.
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Does Elon Musk have a PhD?

Elon Musk has gained a lot of popularity for his unconventional life and career choices. He famously named his newborn X Æ A-12, and sold more than 20,000 flamethrowers despite warnings from various politicians. Already a subscriber? Sign in

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Learn more about the subscription offers. Among his many outlandish career moves is one that dates back to 1995 when he dropped out of Stanford after only two days at the prestigious institution. After earning two bachelor’s degrees, one of which was from the University of Pennsylvania, Musk entered a Stanford Ph.D.

  • Program in physics at the age of 24.
  • Two days later, however, he changed his mind and called it quits.
  • The reason? He believed the internet had more potential to impact the world than his research in physics.
  • He wanted to capitalize on the internet boom and so he did, going on to launch his first company, Zip2, and selling it for over $300 million four years later.

Musk had always been an extraordinary kid, well ahead of his time and his age. He had taught himself how to code at the age of 9 and published his first game at 12. At 17, he took a university-level computer programming aptitude test which examiners made him retake because they had never seen such a high score, his mother shared in a tweet,

He’d go on to revolutionize electric vehicles with Tesla, and make history with SpaceX, He also has a brain-chip startup called Neuralink, which he claims will give superhuman abilities to normal people, and heal everything from mental illness to paralysis. Although it’s clear that Musk is unique in many ways, his decision to quit school is not.

Tech billionaire college dropouts include Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Michael Dell, Colleges tend to follow a rigid structure, mostly teaching what has already been done, instead of exploring the future. Maybe this is why many self-starters like Musk struggle to stay within the confines of the formal education system, dare to innovate on their own, and end up earning billionaire status by doing so.
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Did Elon Musk go to Harvard?

Elon Musk –

College: University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University

Elon Musk is the co-founder of PayPal, the creator of SpaceX and the CEO of Tesla. In 1989, however, the South African immigrant entered Queen’s University in his mother’s native Canada and eventually transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with a degree in physics and economics in 1995.
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Did Elon Musk study physics?

– Elon Musk Elon Musk, the founder of companies such as PayPal, Space X and Tesla Motors, studied physics and economics at the University of Pennsylvania. Part 1 of Alaina G. Levine’s exclusive interview with Musk appeared in the October APS News, Below is part 2, in which he cautions that MBAs are a mistake, hints when we can expect to travel to Mars and explains why his Tesla Model S is making history.

L: How do you approach business problems right now? Does your physics and your mathematics background help you look at business problems maybe in a different way, or think about them via a different process? M: It’s helpful to study physics, because the math that’s in the business stuff is so easy compared to physics.

I remember I was in an advanced securities analysis class and they were teaching people what matrix math is. I was like wow, ok. If you can do physics math then business math is super easy. Probably a lot of people in the sciences sell themselves short on this front.

Because they’re actually way better than they think they are at this stuff. Just generally taking a physics framework to think about any problem–it’s a generalized problem-solving method that can be applied to the economic world as well as the physical world. L: Having studied math and physics myself, I always found that I would look at a business problem like a bifurcation tree and think about things 4 or 5 or 6 moves ahead.

Do you have this as well, and if so, do you think you got this from studying physics? M: Yeah, in general you always want to try to think about the future, try to predict the future. You’re going to generate some error between the series of steps you think will occur versus what actually does occur and you want to try to minimize the error.

That’s a way that I think about it. And I also think about it in terms of probability streams. There’s a certain set of probabilities associated with certain outcomes and you want to make sure that you’re always the house. So things won’t always occur the way you think they’ll occur, but if you calculate it out correctly over a series of decisions you will come out significantly ahead L: So that’s kind of how you’re thinking on a day-to-day basis, would you say? M: Yeah, I think of the future as branching probability streams.

L: Is there any downside to having studied physics or being a physicist in your position and in your industries? M: Definitely not. I encourage everyone to do it. The difficulty is that physics is usually so badly taught in high school and even in junior highThere’s too much of the teaching of the tools and not enough of the “why the hell are we learning this in the first place?” L: When you hire people, what are some of the top qualities or characteristics, aside from the technical know-how, that you look for in an employee? M: In SpaceX, we’re obviously trying to advance the state of rocket technology with the ultimate goal of establishing a self-sustaining civilization on Mars.

In order to do that, we’ve got to hire people who are going to be really good at coming up with innovative solutions for all the elements of a rocket. We’ll look for evidence of exceptional ability,, The grades are one assessment, but it’s certainly possible for someone to game the system in college and pick the right classes and get a 4.0 and neglect everything else.

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So grades are one element that could suggest exceptional ability, but often more important is what someone has done in international competitions. If someone won a national science fair or created some amazing bit of electronics or software as a teenager, something like that shows initiative, innovation and exceptional technical capability.

That’s what I’m looking for on the engineering side. L: What advice would you offer physics-educated professionals and early career physicists who are thinking of leaving physics for entrepreneurship? M: what is the thing that you want to do that you’ll find fulfilling and is really useful to others, and then guide your life in that direction.

In physics itself, there are only a relatively small number of people needed to advance the state of the art, particularly if it’s contingent on completion of some large technical project, like the LHC. But even if someone has no intention of ultimately being a physicist, I still believe that the training of physics is excellent.

So as they’re going through their academic career I would recommend studying physics as a good base and then a broad range of engineering courses and then some degree of specialization in an engineering field where it fulfills someone’s interest, and then arts and sciences courses, particularly history.

And a few business courses are helpful so you at least know the terminology. You can probably do it with one accounting course, I hate accounting. It’s worth it to have some business courses but you don’t need too many. And I wouldn’t recommend an MBA. I’d say no MBA needed.

An MBA is a bad idea. L: Why? M: It teaches people all sorts of wrong things. L: What do you mean? M: They don’t teach people to think in MBA schools. And the top MBA schools are the worst. Because they actually teach people that you must be special, and it causes people to close down their feedback loop and not rigorously examine when they are wrong.

L: But you must hire MBAs, right? M: I hire people in spite of an MBA, not because of one. If you look at the senior managers of my companies, you’ll see very few MBAs there. L: Interesting. If you were sitting on an airplane and we were living in a vacuum and somebody said oh hi, what do you do? What would be your answer? M: I do engineering.

I do aerospace engineering and automotive engineering. Most of my time is spent doing that. L: How much time do you spend on engineering problems as opposed to dealing with the business side of things? M: Most of my week is spent in engineering meetings with my teams. I have meetings with all the technical teams at Tesla and Space X every week.

The last few months I have had to spend proportionally more time on some business activities, reengineering the service and sales process at Tesla. Not my top favorite thing to do, but it needed to be done. L: Do you share technologies between the companies? M: We’re trying to do more of that over time because otherwise it shouldn’t all just flow through me.

  • It’s quite helpful to have the synthesis of rocket technology and automotive technology because I see things that people who are just in one of those industries don’t see.
  • L: Can you give me an example? M: Cars are really primitive, from a structural standpoint compared to rockets, because in order for a rocket to get to orbit you have to be incredibly mass efficient, so the first stage of our rocket is 95% propellant by mass fraction.

That means only 5% of the first stage is engines, electronics, wiring, airframe, and everything else. Which is really a ludicrously low number. So I’m used to extreme mass optimization in the rocket arena, and then you look at most cars: Cars have all sorts of mass in places that don’t do any good and often not enough in places that are important, and almost all cars are made of not very advanced steel.

The Model S is the only all-aluminum car made in North America. Since it has a very heavy battery pack, we have to offset that mass with a much lighter rest-of-car. So in order for the Model S to get the range it has, we had to conserve non-pack mass and that meant going to an all-aluminum body and chassis.

There’s a lot more we can do on the Model S in terms of mass optimization but it was necessary to still be at a mass at the end of the day that’s the same as a gasoline sedan even though you have this heavy battery pack. L: When do you think “ordinary” people will be able to afford space travel in the same way we go on cruises, for example? M: It depends on where in space,

  1. If where the atmosphere is thin, that’s actually relatively easy, because you just punt up and pull down and that’s a 5-minute ride.
  2. If you want to go to an orbit, that’s two orders of magnitude greater energy requirement and then you’ve got to weed off that energy on the way back, so that’s a lot harder.

I can see orbital travel ultimately getting tomaybe 100-200 thousandand then the holy grail is to try to get the cost of going to Mars to under a half a million dollars. That’s the critical economic activation energy needed to have a self-sustaining civilization on Mars.

  1. A final comment: A lot of people in physics are concerned about expenditures on manned space flight because they are not sure what’s the point.
  2. Generally I would agree: if we were just going to bounce around in low Earth orbit, it’s questionable whether it’s worth the expense.
  3. However, if one considers the objective to become a space-faring civilization and a multi-planet species, I think that physicists should support that because it increases the probable lifespan of humanity dramatically, and dramatically increases the scope and scale of civilization, which in turn is what will lead to greater enlightenment in physics and other arenas.

L: Will physicists inherit the world? M: (Laughs) Absolutely. Alaina G. Levine is a science writer and President of Quantum Success Solutions, a science career and professional development consulting enterprise. Her new book on networking strategies for scientists and engineers will be published by Wiley in 2014.
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Was Elon Musk a Harvard dropout?

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Elon Musk earned two bachelor’s degrees but dropped out of a Stanford University Ph.D. program. Today Musk’s estimated net worth is $175.8 billion, making him the world’s second richest. Musk recruits students from competitive universities for Tesla, SpaceX, and other ventures.

Elon Musk just lost the top spot for the richest person in the world. As of December 13, the SpaceX founder, Tesla, and Twitter CEO’s net worth totals $175.8 billion, according to the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List, This estimate launches him two spots above Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whose net worth is estimated at $114.8 billion.

As Silicon Valley billionaires go, Elon Musk is the exception that proves the rule. To begin with, he moved out of Silicon Valley, and his electric car company Tesla is relocating from California to Texas. Musk also skews the typical college drop-out narrative: He completed two bachelor’s degrees before leaving academics to build his empire.

The controversial billionaire traces his passion for technology to his undergrad years spent obsessing over the internet, renewable energy, and space, according to Ashlee Vance’s biography of the entrepreneur.
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Was Elon Musk a good student?

What was Elon Musk like as a student? – According to various accounts of his time as a student, it appears none of his peers expected him to become so successful. In Elon Musk ‘s biography by Ashlee Vance, he was described as a mediocre student at school.

Many of his classmates thought he was “likable, quiet, unspectacular student’. One of them explained further, “there were four or five boys that were considered very brightest. Elon was NOT one of them.” Yet another former classmate was even more critical of Musk, “honestly, there were just no signs that he was going to be a billionaire.

He was never in a leadership position at school. I was rather surprised to see what happened to him.” Other friends and peers recall that he often brought model rockets to school. He would fire them off during his break times. He also had strong opinions about many things, like how he didn’t like using fossil fuels. Billionaires Who Dropped Out Of High School Source:JD Lasica/Flickr He later graduated with an undergraduate degree in economics. Musk then stayed on to pursue a bachelor’s degree in physics. Musk later enrolled at Stanford University, California, to pursue a Ph.D. in energy physics but dropped out a few days later to found Zip2 (his first venture). The rest, as they say, is history.
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What is the best dropout rate?

Tips for Dropout Regularization – If you want to use dropout in the best possible manner and without any risk of losing data, follow the tips given below:

  • For LSTMs, use a different rate of dropout for the input. You can use dropout for any type of neural network as it isn’t bound for one type.
  • Use a large dropout rate for input layers such as 0.8 or 0.9 (high rate of data retention).
  • For hidden layers, the ideal dropout rate is 0.5.
  • As dropout causes thinning of the neurons, only use it for a larger network. If you use it for a smaller network, it won’t work as well.
  • Instead of applying a single dropout rate by guessing, use different rates and check the performance.
  • For large datasets, dropout regularization isn’t ideal. Use it when the training data is limited.

One famous example of a network using Dropout is when researchers trained the VGG network. The researchers trained the network on multiple GPUs for a week using millions of images. Dropout was used during the training process to prevent overfitting. Want to learn more about the famous VGG network? Check out my post about why VGG is so commonly used!
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Who started dropout?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs to be updated, Please help update this to reflect recent events or newly available information. ( August 2020 )

table> Dropout TV

Type of site
  • Video on demand
  • Digital distribution
Headquarters United States Area served Worldwide Owner Sam Reich, IAC (formerly) Industry Internet Parent CollegeHumor URL www,dropout,tv Registration Required Launched September 26, 2018 ; 4 years ago Current status Active

Dropout (stylized as Dropout.tv, DROPOUT, or :DROPOUT) is an American subscription media service provider developed and operated by CH Media, It was founded in September 2018 and provides advertisement-free access to uncensored original shows.
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Where are the most high school dropouts?

County-Level Findings on High School Drop Out Rates in America – Over 9 million children live in the lowest-ranked counties (bottom 25%), and they are facing huge challenges to growing up safe and secure. Nationwide, 15% of high school students failed to graduate on time during the 2016-2017 school year.

Iowa had the lowest percentage of students not graduating on time, with a rate of 9%, closely followed by New Jersey at 9.5%. The states with the highest percentage of students not graduating on time were New Mexico (28.9%) and Oregon (23.3%). On-time graduation rates are lowest in Wheeler County, Oregon, where 74% of children fail to complete high school on time.

Compared to Page County, Virginia – where only 0.4% of students fail to graduate on time – children in Wheeler County are 185 times more likely to miss out on education. Dozens of counties across 14 states reportedly have on-time graduation rates of 100% (although almost all of them are less-populous rural areas with small numbers of children).
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