What Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, And 11 Other Tech Visionaries Were Like In College

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bill gates harvard commencement

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Bill Gates returned to Harvard years later to receive an honorary degree.

The technology industry is known for having been created by college dropouts like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Larry Ellison, but that doesn't mean these innovators didn't have meaningful undergraduate experiences.

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Bill Gates became friends with Steve Ballmer at Harvard, Larry Ellison learned he was a pretty good computer programmer at the University of Illinois, and Steve Jobs considered his time at Reed College among the most valuable experiences of his life.

Meanwhile, Peter Thiel actually graduated from Stanford, but today he thinks college is such a waste of time that he offers $100,000 scholarships to students who want to drop out.

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What can we say, everyone's experience is different.

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.

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