Even the Ivy League isn't immune to dropouts. Tom Szaky -- a Canadian who didn't know that Princeton was in New Jersey until he got to campus -- left college after two years. Szaky was on fall break during freshman year in Montreal when he saw a bountiful weed (yes, that kind of weed) harvest that owed its success to worm and organic waste. The light bulb went off, and he began packaging worm waste in used soda bottles that later ended up on the shelves of Home Depot and Walmart. Over the next year, he would head home after class and work on his business, the way college basketball players head to the gym to work on their free throws. He didn't solicit help from professors and says the faculty was "hands-off" in that respect. By his sophomore year, TerraCycle was taking off -- he had a logo, a name and a diversified body of products -- and it was now or never. "I would have loved to stay in school, but TerraCycle was starting to grow and I was putting more time into it," says Szaky, 28, also a member of the AOL Small Business Board of Directors. "I took a semester off, which turned into a permanent leave." The business has evolved since 2003 -- kites made of Oreo wrappers and picture frames wrapped in bicycle chains, part of the company's "upcycling" line of products, helped catapult revenues to $7.5 million in 2009 -- but he still spends time on campus as a guest lecturer and thinks teaching could be a fun career down the road. For now, he's focused on waste, and he's able to indulge his inner dork with the science of composting. Looks like he didn't need that behavioral economics degree after all, much like other dropouts who felt the need to quit school and carpe diem. "I have nothing against school," says Szaky, author of Revolution in a Bottle. "TerraCycle was happening, and that was the decision at the moment."