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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 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. Einstein did not speak until he was four and did not read until he was seven, causing his teachers and parents to think he was mentally handicapped, slow and anti-social.
Sir Richard Branson
Virgin Atlantic Airways founder, 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 dropped out of school at the age of 16 where he began his first successful entrepreneurial activity, publishing Student magazine.
Ringo Starr
After a very unfortunate start to his uneducated life, Ringo Starkey joined a band at 17 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 while he might not the best drummer in the world, he's definitely the best in the Beatles.
Ellen DeGeneres
Emmy-winning talk show host, Ellen DeGeneres dropped out of the University of New Orleans after one semester to do admin work in a law firm with her cousin. She also held a job in retail selling clothes, being a waitress at TGI Friday's and another restaurant, a house painter, a hostess, and a bartender. In her spare time, she performed stand up comedy in coffee houses.
Bill Gates
Co-founder of the software giant Microsoft, Gates has been ranked the richest person in the world for a number of years. The entrepreneur dropped out of Harvard 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.
James Cameron
Director of "Titanic" and "Avatar," Cameron studied physics at Fullerton College, but he dropped out to become a truck driver. During this period he taught himself about special effects: "I'd go down to the USC library and pull any thesis that graduate students had written about optical printing, or front screen projection, or dye transfers, anything that related to film technology. That way I could sit down and read it, and if they'd let me photocopy it, I would. If not, I'd make notes."
David Karp
The creator of Tumblr never graduated from high school. At 11, he began learning HTML and was soon designing websites for local businesses. Karp went on to attend Bronx Science for one year before dropping out at the age of 15 and started homeschooling. At the time, Karp had aspirations of getting into a college in New York or MIT and saw homeschooling and doing other projects on the side as a way to impress the colleges. Karp never returned to high school or earned his high school diploma. His net worth is now over $200 million.
Mark Zuckerberg
One of the most famous young entrepreneurs ever, Zuckerberg got the idea for Facebook by taking students from Harvards pictures and publishing them online. He built a site and placed two pictures, or pictures of two males and two females. Visitors to the site had to choose who was "hotter" and according to the votes there would be a ranking. Later, he had to apologise for crashing the Harvard network switch because of it's popularity. Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard in his sophomore year to work full time on Facebook, which he launched in his dorm room.
Steve Jobs
Jobs dropped out of Reed College after six months and spent the next 18 months dropping in on creative classes, including a course on calligraphy. He continued attending classes at Reed while sleeping on the floor in friends' dorm rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at a local temple. Jobs later said, "If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."
