
Want to know a secret? It’s a good one. Come closer. Are you ready?
Nobody cares about your grades.
It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Those tiny letters next to your course names only matter while you’re in school. Before and after that, they’re just wee alphabetic indicators of how much you may or may not have enjoyed high school History of Civ or that advanced statistics class you signed up for by accident.
GPAs and standardized tests are not great indicators of the many types of intelligence that exist. And while a scantron can measure your comprehension of sine, cosine and tangent ratios, it can’t reflect the life experiences that teach you how to think critically, make good decisions and forge strong relationships.
C students become presidents. College dropouts run companies. So no matter how “average” your transcript is, just remember that you are capable of extraordinary things.
We’ve already written about how the only difference between success and failure is how you look at it. Success is not just a matter of perspective, it’s a product of second chances. Here’s our list of 14 respected people who didn’t graduate at the top of their class (or at all) and still managed to make something amazing of themselves.
Bill Gates
Before he founded Microsoft at the tender age of 31, Bill Gates was a Harvard dropout. They awarded him an honorary degree eventually, but that was only after he became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire.