Hundreds of students send me e-mail each year for advice about education.     They want to know what to study, or whether it’s OK to drop out of college since that’s what I did. A smaller number of parents send messages asking for suggestions for their sons or daughters. “How can we guide our child toward success?” They ask. My advice is simple. “Get the best education you can. Take advantage of high school and college. Learn how to learn.”

It’s true that I dropped out of college to start Microsoft, but I was at Harvard for three years before dropping out.     As I’ve said before, nobody should drop out of college unless they believe they face the chance of a lifetime. And even then they should consider carefully.

In my company’s early years, we had a bright  part-time programmer who planned to drop out of high school to work. We told him no.      Quite a few of our people didn’t finish college, but we discourage dropping out. Having a diploma certainly helps somebody who is looking to us for a job.             

High school and college offer you the best chance to learn many things and to do projects with others that teach you about team spirit.     In high school there was a time when I was highly focused on writing software, but for most of my high school years I had many interests. In college, I read about all kinds of things and attended different kinds of classes.    For me, classroom is not the only place where you can learn. You can also learn in a library.     But somebody handing you a book doesn’t automatically start your learning. You should learn with other people, ask questions, try out ideas and have a way to test your ability.

In short, it’s a real mistake not to take the chance to study a wide range of subjects and to learn to work with other people because education does count.