WORLD FAMOUS SCHOOL DROP-OUTS

Are college dropouts more successful than people with good education? Itwould seem so if you consider that many billionaires are people who dumpedcollege. However, what this hides is the fact that although millions quitstudies before completing them, very few of them go on to become rich.What the list of the super-rich dropouts signifies is that in business, a topdegree is not as important as having the right aptitude, attitude,determination and vision.Here are some dropouts who went on to become billionaires:

Bill GatesWilliam Henry Gates III

(1955-), along with Paul Allen, co-founded MicrosoftCorporation, the world's largest software maker. Bill Gates, the wealthiestperson in the world with an estimated net worth of

$480 crores (Rs 211,200crore!),

is probably the best-known college dropout.Gates attended an exclusive prep school in Seattle, went on to study atHarvard University, then dropped out to pursue software development. Asstudents in the mid-70s, he and Paul Allen wrote the original Altair BASICinterpreter for the Altair 8800, the first commercially successful PC.In 1975, Micro-Soft - later Microsoft Corporation - was born. Three decades on,

Gates has been Number One on the Forbes 400 for over a dozen years. Andhere's something you probably didn't know: The Bill & Melinda GatesFoundation currently provides 90 per cent of the world budget for theattempted eradication of polio.

Larry EllisonLawrence Joseph Ellison (1944-)

, co-founder and CEO of OracleCorporation, founded his company in 1977 with a sum of $2,000. Once aschool dropout, he is now, according to

Forbes

, one of the richest people inAmerica with a net worth of around $184 crores. The figure also makes himthe ninth richest in the world.As a young man, Ellison worked for the Ampex Corporation, where one of hisprojects was a database for the CIA. He called it Oracle, a name he was toreuse years later for the company that made him famous.Interestingly, the organisation's initial release was Oracle 2. The numbersupposedly implied that all bugs had been eliminated from an earlier version.Ellison is quite a colourful man, and has long dabbled in all kinds of things.Want to learn more? Try his biography,

The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison.

Dhirubhai AmbaniDhirajlal Hirachand Ambani (1932-2002)

was born into the family of aschoolteacher. It was a family of modest means. When he turned 16,Dhirubhai moved to Aden, working first as a gas-station attendant, then as aclerk in an oil company.He returned to India at 26, starting a business with a meagre capital of $375.By the time of his demise, his company - Reliance Industries Ltd - had grownto become an empire, with an estimated annual turnover of $120 crores!Dhirubhai was, in his lifetime, conferred the

Indian Entrepreneur of the 20thCentury Award

by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce andIndustry. A

Times of India

poll in the year 2000 also voted him one of thebiggest creators of wealth in this century.Dhirubhai's is not just the usual rags-to-riches story. He will be rememberedas the one who rewrote Indian corporate history and built a truly globalcorporate group. He is also credited with having single-handedly breathed lifeinto the Indian stock markets and bringing in thousands of investors to thebourses.