Elon Musk’s full name is Elon Reeve Musk. He is the world’s richest person according to the Forbes billionaire list and the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. He was born on 28 June 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa. He can be described as an entrepreneur, businessman, or investor. Elon Musk has a great interest in the internet technology and is the CEO, founder of several companies such as the Founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer of SpaceX, the CEO of Tesla, founder of The Boring Company, Co-founder of Neuralink, OpenAI, and Zip2, founder of X.com, and also the president of Musk Foundation. Elon Musk has not only studied at one college but went to different universities namely the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, Queen’s University, University of Pretoria.
Following are the different universities at which Elon Musk studied-
- Queen’s University-
Elon Musk didn’t feel good at school and wanted to go to college. He first took admission to the Queen’s University located in Ontario, Canada in 1990. Since his mother was born in Canada, this helped him to apply for a Canadian passport to go to Canada. While all these procedures of admission were in process, Musk was admitted to the University of Pretoria in South Africa for five months. These five months of study at the University of Pretoria helped him to not perform some necessary service in the military of South Africa. He reached Canada one year early for college admission and there he lived with his cousin and worked at a farm to pay expenses.
2. The University of Pennsylvania-
Elon was aware of the fact that it is easier to enter the United States through Canada and so after two years in 1992, he got transferred to the University of Pennsylvania ( located in the USA) from Queen’s University. He was transferred based on a scholarship. Elon Musk has earned two bachelor’s degrees, one from this university and the second from Queen’s University. He has completed these degrees in physics and economics in 1997. Musk was more inclined toward physics and hence opted to do two internships in Silicon Valley in 1994 during the summer. One was done at Pinnacle Research Institute for energy storage and the second was at Palo Alto for Rocket Science Games.
3. Stanford University-
In 1995, Elon Musk started to study the Doctor of Philosophy(Ph.D.) program in physics at Stanford University located in California but he left the university just after the two days after his beginning. At that time, he was 24 years of age. Musk dropped out of the university because he felt that internet technology has much more potential than physics to bring change to the world. His majestic success allows people to believe that technology is the future. After dropping out, he started his first company ‘Zip2’, which was sold for over $300 million after four years.
Elon Musk’s view on college-
In one of his interviews, Elon said that college is just for fun and not for learning. He was of the view that one can learn anything for free. He said that the main work of the college is to complete the assignments on time and hang around with friends. Though his company Tesla requires a bachelor’s and master’s degree, he still does not think that students graduating from college are fully capable of getting a job, they must have some exceptional ability. He is trying to not take university criteria for a job in his company.
Elon Musk’s business career-
Some of the major business deals done by Musk are-
- Zip2-
In 1995, when Elon Musk dropped out of college, he and his two brothers Greg Kouri and Kimbal started the company zip2 which is a web software company. They sold the company for around $300 million in 1999 to Compaq.
2. SpaceX-
SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk in May 2002. It tried its first launch in 2006 that got failed. The name of the first rocket was Falcon 1. The company tried two more times but didn’t get any results which put a lot of pressure on Musk and his mental health. Finally, in 2008, the company succeeded to launch the rocket into orbit. After this achievement, SpaceX launched many more satellites and rockets into space.
3. Tesla-
In 2004, Elon Musk invested around $6.5 billion in Tesla and became the chairman of the company. After that, he became very active in all the company’s decisions. In 2008, he became the CEO and product architect of the company. The first car launched by Tesla was an electric sports car in 2008 named the Roadster.
4. Neuralink-
Musk is the co-founder of this company. This company works on developing devices with Artificial intelligence and insert them in the human brain to know about its working with the brain.
5. The Boring Company-
Elon Musk founded this company in 2016. It works on the construction of tunnels. It recently constructed a tunnel in Las Vegas in 2021.
Conclusion-
Elon Musk has in total studied at four different colleges whether for a few days, months, or complete years. During his college time, he used to earn by hosting parties with friends. He was a very shrewd child during his school time also and found his real interest in technology. Now, he is earning around $273 billion annually.