125 Successful People Who Didn’t Graduate College

Right now, you’re probably asking yourself, “Is college worth it?”

I won’t sit here and say, “No, college is a scam and people who go to college are fools.”

Truthfully, there are a lot of good reasons people choose to go to college. For some, going to college is the right option.

But going to college isn’t the only option.

If it were the only option, then everyone who didn’t go to college would be a failure, right?

We know that isn’t true, because we’ve all heard the dropout-to-billionaire stories of tech geniuses like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg.

But are those guys one-in-a-million exceptions to the rule?

How realistic is it for someone to be successful without going to college?

We’ve done the research for you and compiled a list of 125 people who found success without a college degree.

Sure, some are Zuckerberg-level geniuses, but those aren’t the only names you’ll see.

You’ll also see a lot of people who found the right college alternative and worked hard to achieve success in a wide range of jobs:

• Real estate entrepreneurs
• Corporate managers and executives
• Journalists
• High-paid freelance writers
• Motivational speakers
• Marketing and video production consultants
• TV personalities

And a whole lot more.

125 Successful People Who Didn’t Go to College

As you’re exploring the best option for your future, keep these 125 success stories in mind.

1. Ross Alex

Alex dropped out of college to become a real estate entrepreneur who’s now created two six-figure real estate businesses.

2. Yashar Ali

Ali is a journalist responsible for breaking some of the biggest news stories in recent years from the Fox News sexual harassment scandal to Harvey Weinstein, to the Russia investigation, but he never went to college.

3. Paul Allen

When you think of Microsoft, you probably don’t think of Paul Allen. But like Gates, Allen dropped out of college after two years to pursue computer programming. In fact, it was Allen who convinced Gates to leave Harvard.

4. Mary Kay Ash

Ash was the founder of Mary Kay, the multi-level cosmetics marketing company, which today has over $3.6 billion in revenue per year. Ash didn’t go to college because her family couldn’t afford to send her. Instead, she got married at 17 before getting divorced nearly 20 years later in 1953. After her divorce, she attended the University of Houston for a year before dropping out. In 1963, she formed Mary Kay Cosmetics.

5. Julian Assange

Assange is the founder of controversial media organization WikiLeaks. He attended Central Queensland University and the University of Melbourne in Australia but dropped out for moral reasons.

Assange was obsessed with computer programming as a kid and used his self-developed expertise to become one of the world’s best hackers and most controversial figures.

6. Zachary Babcock

Babcock is the author of Prison To Promised Land, which talks about his five years in prison and how anyone can find happiness and fulfillment after addiction, loss, and other struggles. Today, he’s a motivational speaker, has a podcast, and runs a Facebook ad agency.

7. Cathal Berragan

Berragan is a college dropout who left school to start the social media marketing agency, Social Chain.

8. Patrick Bet-David

Bet-David‘s family immigrated to the United States at 10 as Iranian refugees. He joined the military after high school and then took a few traditional jobs at finance companies before being inspired to launch PHP Agency, an insurance sales, marketing, and distribution company, before the age of 30.

Bet-David is an Iranian immigrant and US Army veteran who worked a few traditional jobs after his military service ended before starting his own financial services company.

9. Gautam Bhargava

Bhargava is a high school dropout and the founder of peeyr.com, a peer education marketplace connecting students with peers for tutoring.

10. Chandler Bolt

Bolt dropped out of college in 2013 and is now the author of five best-selling books. He’s also the founder and CEO of Self-Publishing School.

11. Matt Boney

Boney attended Brown University and then had an idea for a new take on vacation rental packages. He dropped out, moved to Miami, and founded Daycation.

12. Richard Branson

Branson is a high school dropout and founder of Virgin Group, a multi-national venture capital company. Though extremely smart and hard-working, Branson struggled with dyslexia that made attending traditional educational institutions nearly impossible.

13 Travis Brodeen

Brodeen is the CTO of Newchip and was making $150,000 per year by age 19. He’s been involved in startups for 20 years and recently founded MVP Institute, a company that helps startups raise early-stage capital.

14. Mitchell Broderick (Praxis)

Broderick attended a local community college before deciding he wanted to take his life in a different direction. He dropped out and discovered Praxis, which helped him land a sales job for Advantage Media Group. Broderick thrived in the role, and after graduating from Praxis, he was promoted to VP of Business Development. Today, Broderick is the VP of Client Development at Platform, a real estate marketing agency.

Here’s what Mitchell had to say about his Praxis experience:

“Praxis isn’t something that contrarians do to be different for a year. They do it because it works. They get awesome jobs making great money.”

15. James Cameron

Cameron is one of the biggest names in film, directing movies like The Terminator, Aliens, Titanic, and Avatar. He enrolled in Fullerton College in 1973 to study physics before switching to English and ultimately dropping out in 1974.

Cameron got into film because he was blown away by Star Wars in 1977 and worked his way up from production assistant to model maker to art director before becoming the household name he is today.

16. Holly Cardew

Cardew is a college dropout who founded Pixc.com, which helps e-commerce stores optimize their products and images to increase online sales. She also founded Vop, which makes your TikTok feed shoppable.

17. AJ Cartas

Cartas dropped out of college in 2015 to focus on social media marketing and has been running his own agency, Syzygy Social, since January 2020.

18. Pete Cashmore

Cashmore founded Mashable at age 19 without ever having gone to college. In 2017, Mashable was sold for nearly $50 million.

19. Tim Chermak

Chermak is a college dropout and a co-founder of Platform, a digital marketing agency for real estate professionals.

20. Mike Clum

Clum dropped out of college in 2011, bought a camera for $600, and started Clum Creative. At first, he cold-called companies asking if he could shoot videos for them. Nearly 10 years later, Clum Creative has grown to become a full-fledged video production company with over $3 million in annual sales.

Clum started his successful video production company with a $600 camera and a lot of hustle.

21. Gabriel Conte

Conte is a YouTuber with 1.85 million subscribers. He dropped out of college to grow his channel and is now a full-time Youtuber.

22. Simon Cowell

Cowell dropped out of school at age 16 and took a job working in a mailroom. At 23, he started his own record label, Fanfare, and now he’s known as the tough-to-please American Idol critic.

23. Philip DeFranco

DeFranco is a YouTuber with 6.39 million subscribers. He dropped out of college to dedicate more time to his daily news channel, which covers political and controversial topics.

24. Ellen DeGeneres

DeGeneres dropped out of the University of New Orleans after just one semester, instead deciding to pursue stand-up comedy while working odd jobs to make ends meet. It took nearly 10 years, but DeGeneres finally caught her break on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

25. Michael Dell

Dell founded Dell Technologies after dropping out of the University of Texas after his freshman year at age 19. Today, he’s worth $38.4 billion.

26. John Paul DeJoria

DeJoria overcame a tough childhood to co-found John Paul Mitchell Systems in 1980 and Patron Tequila despite only having a high school diploma.

DeJoria is the co-founder of the Paul Mitchell hair products line and founder of Patron Spirits who was twice homeless and sold encyclopedias door-to-door while searching for success.

27. Barry Diller

Diller dropped out of UCLA to become the president of Paramount Pictures and CEO of Fox Studios before becoming the CEO of IAC, which owns Match.com and the Home Shopping Network, among other properties.

28. Jack Dorsey

Dorsey founded Twitter after dropping out of NYU.

29. Jake Ducey

Ducey is a three-time published author who’s given TED talks, toured with Vans Warped Tour, and has a YouTube channel with more than 600,000 subscribers.

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30. Addison Rae Easterling

Easterling is a college dropout who left to pursue her TikTok influencer career (@addisonre) and later launched her own beauty label, ITEM Beauty.

31. Daniel Ek

Ek co-founded Spotify after dropping out of the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden just eight weeks into his engineering program. He became a millionaire at 23 and a billionaire at 35.

32. Jesse Elder

Elder didn’t finish high school, and today he’s a former MMA fighter-turned-entrepreneur who works as a mentor and life coach focusing on personal happiness.

33. Larry Ellison

Ellison dropped out of two colleges only to later become the founder of Oracle.

34. Rand Fishkin

Fishkin is the co-founder of Moz, one of the largest and most influential SEO companies in the world. Fishkin dropped out of the University of Washington in 2000 to work full-time at his mother’s marketing firm before launching the SEOmoz blog in 2004, which later became the company he co-founded.

35. Michael Fisk

Fisk skipped college and founded Photoboxx, an event-based photo activation company that released one of the first hashtag printers in the world.

36. Sam Forline

Forline dropped out of school and established Blue Collar Scholars in 2013 to hire college students to work in their communities. He’s largely responsible for the success of the Ice Bucket Challenge in his role as the Director of Organizations Against ALS.

Forline is largely responsible for the success of the Ice bucket Challenge, which raised $115 million for the ALS Association.

37. Damien Foord

Foord is a college dropout and Air Force veteran who’s now a branding expert and Principal Strategist at Prismonde.

38. Brett Fox

Fox is a college dropout and a co-founder of Photzy.com, an online photography school.

39. Romacio Fulcher

Fulcher was a college dropout at 19 and became a self-made real estate millionaire by 25.

40. Joe Gagliese

Joe put his college degree on hold to co-found Viral Nation, an influencer marketing agency that’s helped clients like Ray Ligaya land sponsorships with brands like Sony and Tic Tac.

41. Sachet Gagwani

Gagwani enrolled in Radford University to study computer science but dropped out because he “didn’t learn anything new.” He founded an anonymous, social media geolocation app called Covertly and now runs a company called G Venture Group that performs various business services for its clients.

42. Bill Gates

Gates dropped out of Harvard after two years to co-found Microsoft with fellow dropout Paul Allen. Gates became a millionaire by age 26 and is worth $102 billion today.

43. David Geffen

Geffen co-founded DreamWorks after dropping out of three different colleges: Santa Monica City College, Brooklyn College, and the University of Texas.

44. Loren Gray

Gray gained fame on musical.ly (now TikTok) in 2015 while in 6th grade. Today, she has 20.1 million Instagram followers (@loren) and 48.4 million TikTok followers (@lorengray).

45. David Green

Green is the founder of Hobby Lobby who skipped college to start his own arts and crafts company with a $600 loan and an idea to make miniature picture frames. Today, he’s worth $7.6 billion.

Green started Hobby Lobby with a $600 loan and grew his business to over 900 stores and 43,000 employees in 47 states.

46. Micah Green

Green is a Cornell dropout who founded Maidbot, a housekeeping robot for hotels.

47. Nash Grier

Grier initially gained fame in high school through Vine, becoming the second most-followed user on the platform.

48. Maayan Gordon

Gordon is a college dropout, glass artist, TikTok sensation, and now owns Maayan Gordon Media where she’s a TikTok and LinkedIn coach.

49. Lucy Guo

Guo is a successful computer programmer who left Carnegie Mellon in 2014 after two years to pursue an internship with Facebook. Since dropping out, she’s held a variety of impressive positions, including Product Designer roles at Quora and Snapchat. In 2019, she founded her own investment firm, Backend Capital.

50. Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag

Haag is an eSports star and YouTuber with 3.26 million subscribers. He dropped out of college to dedicate more time to professional Call of Duty tournaments, which is how he gained much of his YouTube fame.

Haag was one of the best Call of Duty players of all-time and won $103,000 in 2011 alone, well before eSports reached its current levels of popularity.

51. A.J. Hakimi

Hakimi dropped out of college and hustled his way to a full-time income by buying and selling items on Craigslist. Today, he’s The Flipping Ninja.

52. Jake Heilbrunn

Heilbrunn dropped out of college to backpack Central America and then wrote Off The Beaten Trail. He’s now a social media strategist at Launchbox 365, which bridges the gap between managers and millennials in the workplace.

53. Randalyn Hill (Praxis)

Hill graduated high school at age 16 and wasn’t interested in the traditional college experience. Instead, she took a gap year, during which she discovered Praxis. Through Praxis, Hill landed a job at a coaching startup, Ama La Vida, where she honed her skills for 18 months before starting a career as a full-time marketing consultant at cre8tives.co. She’s also a podcast host on WanderBarn, an Indie podcast network.

Hill used her Praxis experience to start her own thriving marketing agency, Cre8tives.co.

54. Lydia Hodgson (Praxis)

Hodgson was accepted to several colleges but was burned out from high school and unready to commit to more traditional schooling. Instead, she applied to Praxis and got a job in marketing and communications for a real estate company. Today, she’s a Project Manager and Customer Success Specialist for a tech company.

55. Mandi Holmes

Holmes is a college dropout who built She Can Coterie, a full-service business and marketing management agency for online, service-based women business owners.

56. Seth Hymes

Hymes is a college dropout who worked in various digital marketing roles before creating his own digital marketing course in 2016.

57. Steve Jobs

Jobs dropped out of Reed College after just 6 months because he couldn’t understand how the college experience would benefit him. He traveled for a few years before co-founding Apple Computers in 1976 with partners Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne.

58.