1. Simon Cowell
Dropped out of: A London boarding school in 1975 at age 16.
Cowell was such a poor student that the school held him back a year, which landed him in his younger brother’s grade. His family was well-connected -- his family’s neighbor was the head of MGM studios in London, and Stanley Kubrick, who would one day buy the Cowell family home, offered him some work on The Shining -- but when Cowell went down to the EMI studio in Hertfordshire and saw so many people standing in line for work on the film, he decided it wasn’t for him. He wanted to make his own money, so he applied for a job in the mail room at EMI and worked his way up to record producer.
His accomplishments: These days, Cowell is best known for his role as the acerbic judge on American Idol, for which his salary is estimated at over $30 million. He owns a record label, has successfully promoted various bands and artists -- including the international operatic group Il Divo -- and is the highly successful creator/producer of such TV shows as Pop Idol and American Inventor.
By graduation time: By the time Cowell would have graduated from boarding school, he’d already been working as a clerk in the mail room at EMI for 18 months and was soon to become a producer. It wasn’t until the mid-'80s that Cowell started his own record label, Fanfare.
2. William H. (Bill) Gates III
Dropped out of: Harvard University in 1975 at age 20.
He dropped out in large part due to the urging of his childhood friend Paul Allen. Gates and Allen convinced MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) -- the makers of the first microcomputer, Altair -- that they had written a version of the programming language BASIC that would work well on the Altair. It was a lie -
- they hadn’t written a single line of code -- but they went to work and finished it in eight weeks.
http://www.askmen.com/money/successf...4_success.html
2. Michael Dell
Dropped out of: The University of Texas, Austin, at age 19.
Michael Dell was an average student and a freshman living in the dorms with plans of studying medicine when he founded PC’s Limited computer company in 1984 with $1,000. In the first full year, PC’s Limited -- better known today as Dell Computer Corporation -- grossed $6 million.
His accomplishments: Thanks to innovations in selling computers, as well as some timely buy-outs, Dell Inc. is currently the most profitable PC maker worldwide. With multiple appearances in Forbes, Fortune, PC Magazine, Financial World, and Industry Week, Michael Dell’s personal worth is measured somewhere around $19 billion.
In May 2006, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation gave Dell’s former university a $50 million grant to build three new research centers on campus, all of which will bear his name.
By graduation time: At about the time his UT class was graduating, Dell’s once-modest computer company was going public.
http://www.askmen.com/money/successf...0_success.html
6 Inspirational Dropouts
