Dropouts

Dropouts are some (okay, maybe most) of Columbia's most famous students. That's right, a Columbia education is SO good that you don't even need a full 4 years to take the world by storm! Making it to Commencement is clearly overrated. Columbia is so proud of its long history of great dropouts, it printed a full length catalogue of students who had failed to graduate, from 1758 through the date of publication in 1897.

Notable Dropouts

• Alexander Hamilton (joined the Revolutionary War)
• Lou Gehrig (signed a contract with the Yankees and bolted)
• Langston Hughes (from the School of Mines - that's right, one of the great American poets was a SEAS drop-out...)
• Eudora Welty (from the Business School, perhaps for obvious reasons)
• Jack Kerouac (CC)
• Alicia Keys
• Lauryn Hill
• Joseph Gordon-Levitt (GS)
• Jake Gyllenhaal (CC)
• Isamu Noguchi (dropped out of CC's premed program to sculpt full-time)
• José Raúl Capablanca (World Chess Champion, 1921-1927; dropped out of the School of Mines after one semester because he spent too much time playing chess)
• Mortimer J. Adler (spread the gospel of the Core Curriculum to the University of Chicago and St. John's College in Annapolis. He didn't bother to take the Swim Test, and came back to teach Core classes with John Erskine)
• Theodore Roosevelt (from the Law School, after being elected to State Assembly)
• Franklin Roosevelt (from the Law School, after passing the Bar)
• Utada Hikaru
• John Parke Custis, George Washington's stepson
• Amelia Earhart
• James Cagney, dropped out after one semester in 1918 when his father died in the 1918 flu pandemic

Honorable Mentions

• Benjamin Cardozo - dropped out of the Law School after graduating from the College
• Oscar Hammerstein II - dropped out of the Law School after graduating from the College
• Charles Henry Wharton - resigned as president of Columbia in 1801 without ever having actually shown up for the job after his appointment.