Should I quit college to run my business?

Student Lounge College Life
1

<p>Don't know what forum to post this in so I guess I'll just post it here.</p>

<p>Basically, I just want some sober advice from a stranger on whether leaving school might make sense for me.</p>

<p>Right now, I'm finishing up my freshman year at a top-20 university with a good business school and my intended major is entrepreneurship. To pay for college, I have an online business that I run part-time that's making me around $30K a year that I've been running for a little over 2 years now. A lot of that money goes to tuition but parents still help. I am highly confident that if I weren't fettered by school I could expand it to make me six figures within a year and hopefully a lot more with time and I have a solid plan of how I can achieve this.</p>

<p>I basically hate going to school and am not doing too well in most of my classes and struggle to find any motivation to try in boring classes that have no relevance to what I know I will be doing with my life. I pulled a 3.5 last semester but that will dip to maybe a 2.6 this semester. Besides that, I am tired of the extended childhood that is college life and tired with the environment at my school (my school's values are quite different from my own), and want to be independent. I was thinking of transferring to solve at least part of the problem, but it does not seem realistic at this point with my grades.</p>

<p>My parents are pressuring me to stay in school, but I feel that they've given me awful advice before and as such their opinion is not important to me.</p>

<p>Anyhow, I have two choices. Stay in college for another 3 years, probably be rather unhappy and unfulfilled, pay a lot of my own money for tuition and lose potential income, and graduate from a good school but with a poor GPA, and have no debt (will probably have a solid chunk of savings) and a business that probably won't be any more developed than what I have now and maybe miss out on some business opportunities. Or quit school now, save money and make a lot more money (at least in the short run) and be happier doing what I really want to do and be free. </p>

<p>Either way I will be running my business eventually- the difference is just tuition cost and time. The degree will not give me a job, school might teach me some things about running a business but I am skeptical that first-hand experience wouldn't teach me more.</p>

<p>So, what do you think seems to be the wisest decision, looking from a long-term financial perspective? Does the benefit of a top college degree in entrepreneurship in helping me run my business outweigh the cost of being miserable for 3 more years, missing out on income and paying tuition?</p>

2

<p>If you feel like you can grow the business and that it won’t fall out from under you then go for it. If you have even the slightest doubt about the business you should probably stay in school.</p>

3

<p>Can you just devote summer to the business for now? Test the waters. Or, if you feel that is not enough of a trial, take one semester off? Maybe the time off will also be enough to recharge your motivation. Caution: for many, a semester off turns in to dropping out. I think that when you get further along in your degree, you will be more interested in the subject matter. Less GenEd, more of what your passion is: entrepreneurship, marketing, finance, etc. You will have the real-life experiences to make your studies come alive, and it won’t be just book work.</p>

4

<p>Entrepreneurs usually do what ever it takes to grow their business. You hear success stories of the guys who created Google or Facebook when they were in college and dropped out to grow their businesses and became highly successful. Something like this is high risk and high reward if it works out for them but also there are the many and many more failures that tried and have nothing to show for it. </p>

<p>You said you’re making 30K a year. Is that all revenue or profits? If its all profit I don’t see why you can’t take some time off school to see if you can make it grow. </p>

<p>If you haven’t already you can talk to some finance people to do some valuations for you. They can do something like a DCF model and see what your projected future cash flows will be in the future based on the previous two years your business has been running to get some insight of what you’re dealing with in the future (something like investment banks did for Facebook before they went public) to see if the rewards are worth the risk. </p>

<p>If your business fails hopefully you have some money left over to continue on with school.</p>

5

<p>That was indeed $30K profit. A little over $50K revenue. Working about 2 hours a day on average. Now if I worked 10hrs a day and hired an employee to do a lot of the menial tasks that are a part of my business (it is online retail so packaging packages and stuff. I’m not an amazing innovator like Mark Zuckerberg but I do something that works and is proven with fairly low risk), it seems completely realistic for me to make what I have now many many times larger in a short amount of time. My absolute worst case scenario would probably be making around $50-60K a year, which is the average starting salary out of b-school anyways… </p>

<p>Question is, how easy would it be to get readmitted into my current college if I feel the need to go back after 1,2, or maybe even 5 years?</p>

6

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<p>I imagine this depends a lot on your school. It might be worthwhile to go talk to someone in the appropriate administrative position to give you some answers.</p>

7

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<p>It depends on the school. In many cases, it is easier to return after a leave of absence than to get admitted the first time. Look for withdrawal and readmission policies on the school web site and ask the appropriate administrative people for any question beyond that. If you do withdraw, be sure to do any needed paper work to ensure that you can return as easily as possible, rather than just dropping out with no notice.</p>

8

<p>Most colleges allow you to take a gap year. I’d try that route before dropping out completely.</p>

9

<p>I would recommend that you continue on with college and do the business part-time.</p>

<p>If you decide to quit school, it will be difficult to go back at a later date. Since your parents are still willing to support you financially somewhat for college, it would be a good idea to finish college.</p>

<p>The only exception I see is if you are trying to promote a new brand or service, in which the few years of standstill activity might mean a competitor could take your idea and make millions. If that is not the case, school should be your priority.</p>