I've found the most fun I've had was when I was working on side projects while taking relevant courses. I ended up staying at MIT for all four years + an extra year for their 1 year EECS Masters program. All during that time, I was working on a variety of different projects. I purposely picked relevant subjects like Machine Learning / User Interface Studies / Behavioral Psychology.
Not only did it help me understand the subjects better, it let me master a number of direct cross-applications into web products. It does wonders for your creativity when you are actively thinking about new products while being exposed to so many new techniques.
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On the topic of dropping out, an aspect that gets underemphasized in this community is how strong of an ideation muscle you have. Know that the more you do it, the better ideas you come up with. School for me was an excuse to hang around while taking a few classes while building new things. As each year passed, I realized I got better and better ideas.
It would have been rough for me to drop out of school with the first few "promising" ideas that I came up with. At that point in time, they seemed like game-changers that would transform the world. Now I realize if you are the person to come up with good ideas, you'll come up with great ideas later on.
Use those years in college to train up your ideation muscle along with your implementation skills (web dev languages / backend management / mobile dev, etc.) During your final year, apply to incubators using your uber skillset and amaze everyone. Not only will you no longer have the temptation to return to school, you will be putting yourself up for review when you are strongest.
It makes a much stronger statement to apply once and be awesome than to apply twice and try to wow people based on how much you "improved".
Comments
I've found the most fun I've had was when I was working on side projects while taking relevant courses. I ended up staying at MIT for all four years + an extra year for their 1 year EECS Masters program. All during that time, I was working on a variety of different projects. I purposely picked relevant subjects like Machine Learning / User Interface Studies / Behavioral Psychology.
Not only did it help me understand the subjects better, it let me master a number of direct cross-applications into web products. It does wonders for your creativity when you are actively thinking about new products while being exposed to so many new techniques.
.
On the topic of dropping out, an aspect that gets underemphasized in this community is how strong of an ideation muscle you have. Know that the more you do it, the better ideas you come up with. School for me was an excuse to hang around while taking a few classes while building new things. As each year passed, I realized I got better and better ideas.
It would have been rough for me to drop out of school with the first few "promising" ideas that I came up with. At that point in time, they seemed like game-changers that would transform the world. Now I realize if you are the person to come up with good ideas, you'll come up with great ideas later on.
Use those years in college to train up your ideation muscle along with your implementation skills (web dev languages / backend management / mobile dev, etc.) During your final year, apply to incubators using your uber skillset and amaze everyone. Not only will you no longer have the temptation to return to school, you will be putting yourself up for review when you are strongest.
It makes a much stronger statement to apply once and be awesome than to apply twice and try to wow people based on how much you "improved".
Thanks for a great reply. What are you doing today?
Hi Benregn,
Sorry I didn't see your response earlier. I ended up doing YC with the Summer 2010 class.
Continuing to work on the startup day-to-day. :)