Alicia Keys to Matt Damon: 7 celebrities who dropped out of Ivy League colleges

Aug 18 , 2020

Matt Damon, Alicia Keys and David Duchovny all attended prestigious Ivy League universities before eventually dropping out. Photos: Warner Bros, Shutterstock, 20th Century Fox Television

From Joseph Gordon-Levitt to Jake Gyllenhaal, all these smart-minded celebrities were on the road to serious academic success before quitting top schools for a life under the spotlights

Not every actor or actress can be like Emma Watson, selected as a child to star in a massively popular franchise like Harry Potter and then able to take time off from acting full-time to study and complete a degree at a prestigious Ivy League university. Just being accepted to an Ivy League school is hard enough without having to factor in the additional commitments of a full-time profession.

For many, though, getting a shot at fame is something that can’t be passed up. A number of big-name celebrities have demonstrated the brains required to get into a prestigious university but have then decided to quit to focus on their career and make a fist of it. Here are seven such stars who attended an Ivy League school but dropped out before graduating.

Matt Damon

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Damon grew up surrounded by some of the world’s best institutes of higher education such as Harvard and MIT. The future Hollywood star was accepted into the former in 1988 where he studied English. For one of his class assignments Damon wrote an early draft of what would eventually become the Oscar-winning film Good Will Hunting.

Despite nearly completing his degree – he was just 12 credits short – Damon dropped out in the final year to feature in the movie Geronimo: An American Legend, which he expected to be a hit. Fortunately, his error of judgment wasn’t fatal to his career.

Alicia Keys

A Grammy Award-winning singer, Keys has serious smarts to go alongside her renowned musical talent. She graduated high school early, at 16, and moved to New York to study at Columbia University. However, the experience of living away from home at a young age, plus the combined pressures of study and working professionally as a musician – she had signed with Columbia Records at 15 – proved too stressful from the start. After just four weeks at university she decided to quit to focus on her music career.

Jake Gyllenhaal