I don't know what maths education is in US high schools but in Australia I learnt differential and integral calculus in high school. It wasn't required (it depended on what courses you chose) but most people who went into science and engineering did it (along with physics and chemistry).
There's two ways to look at this problem:
1. There are a significant number of college dropouts who founded massive companies (Bill Gates springs to mind). There are people who are so driven that college is a waste of time for them. A certain amount of luck is required too but luck rewards persistence; and
2. There is everybody else.
If you're asking "should I go to college?" you probably don't belong in (1). Those in (2) should go to college.
Remember too that for every success story in (1) there are a hundred stories of failure and a dozen success stories in (2).
It should serve as a cautionary tale that at the time something like Google could never have been created when it was without a solid theoretical foundation.
1. There are a significant number of college dropouts who founded massive companies (Bill Gates springs to mind). There are people who are so driven that college is a waste of time for them. A certain amount of luck is required too but luck rewards persistence; and
This example is usually posted and, once again, usually noted that people like Gates and Zuckerburg are really bad examples of people who "didn't go to college" (especially since they actually did, they just didn't complete it). The only lesson that you can really take from them is that if you are already proficient, have achieved an upper-middle/upper class education and gotten into Harvard, and formed a successful software company that benefits heavily from luck of positioning and timing, yes it may be a good idea to drop out of school.
I don't know what maths education is in US high schools but in Australia I learnt differential and integral calculus in high school
Confuses me too. I did multivariable differential/integral calculus in high school as well, but those with only calculus in high school seem to get in a bind whenever it comes to vector calculus or worse, calculus/differential equations with linear algebra.
Ease up on the smoke machine there, friend. You don't have to be Harvard material to "make it" without a degree, and you know it.
A good friend of mine with even less school than me (I have a summer semester at UIC) recently left his last job with a seven (7) figure pay-check to found and then sell (lucratively) his third startup. He could also kick both of our asses in a programming contest.
JWZ: another obvious counterexample.
There are people for whom school is extremely helpful, but if you're going to make your way through your career on raw technical aptitude, it's clearly not a requirement.
I don't know what maths education is in US high schools but in Australia I learnt differential and integral calculus in high school. It wasn't required (it depended on what courses you chose) but most people who went into science and engineering did it (along with physics and chemistry).
There's two ways to look at this problem:
1. There are a significant number of college dropouts who founded massive companies (Bill Gates springs to mind). There are people who are so driven that college is a waste of time for them. A certain amount of luck is required too but luck rewards persistence; and
2. There is everybody else.
If you're asking "should I go to college?" you probably don't belong in (1). Those in (2) should go to college.
Remember too that for every success story in (1) there are a hundred stories of failure and a dozen success stories in (2).
It should serve as a cautionary tale that at the time something like Google could never have been created when it was without a solid theoretical foundation.