Why I Dropped Out Of My MBA (And Why You Shouldn’t)

Earlier this week, I announced that I’m dropping out of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, stepping down as its co-student body president, and joining Google DeepMind.

When I’ve told people that I’ve left grad school, the immediate reaction has tended toward cynicism. People assume I found higher education broken, that an MBA is obsolete in the era of AI, or that traditional universities can’t keep pace with a shifting world.

I believe that narrative is wrong, and it definitely doesn’t represent my experience.

I’m writing this because I want to set the record straight, in my own words: I don’t have a crisis of faith in higher education, in Stanford, or in the GSB. Quite the opposite; I’m leaving because the program did its job so well that, after just one year, I captured enough of what I came to achieve. So, I felt comfortable leaving early.

I believe, strongly, that the MBA remains one of the highest-leverage investments you can make, especially right now. I watched my classmates extract tremendous value from their MBAs.

I’ll first cover where I saw the full two years make sense for most people, and then end with some thoughts on how my specific calculus differed enough to justify stepping away early.

WHERE I SAW THE MBA DELIVER JUSTIFIABLE VALUE

Most people who thrive in MBA programs fall into a few distinct categories:

1. First, there is the classic career pivot. You want to move from industry X to industry Y. An MBA can provide the functional knowledge you need to be successful in interviews and early-career tasks. You also take coursework that doubles as projects you can list on your resume. There are also on-campus recruiting pipelines, networking opportunities, and alumni credibility to help you bridge that pivot gap. You see this most commonly with VC or IB people moving into PE; consultants moving into industries they previously consulted for; engineers or strategy/ops people pivoting to product management.
2. Second, there is the structured promotion. In some industries like private equity, banking, and management consulting, the credential still serves as a prerequisite for senior leadership and partner-track equity. Returning to your previous firm with the MBA degree unlocks upward mobility that’s nearly impossible to access otherwise.
3. Third is entrepreneurship. Founders with high conviction arrive looking for co-founders. Builders with an early concept arrive needing time, institutional grants, faculty mentorship, and access to venture (the GSB is especially great for these people — tons of collaborators, mentors, and money). Pre-idea entrepreneurs use the two years to evaluate spaces, stress-test business models, and discover a problem worth founding a company around. It’s a fantastic environment to meet people, go deep in an industry, test ideas, and raise money.
4. Fourth, there is the management and business craft itself. Believe it or not, some people do actually get their MBA for the education! I know it sounds unbelievable, but you do actually take classes when you get an MBA, and perhaps more controversially: these (usually) are actually very good classes! People will tell you that this stuff can easily be learned “on the job”. But learning “on the job” usually means learning via trial and error. Navigating hiring and firing; pitching a board; owning a P&L; making strategic bets that will risk people’s careers — these are not areas I personally wanted to learn via trial and error, “on the job”. High-quality MBA programs like Stanford’s use intensive roleplay-first classes with continuous peer feedback to build muscle memory before you step into the hot seat. It’s like an RL simulation environment for agents.
5. Fifth, there is using it as time to explore. Unlike targeted pivoters who arrive with a clear destination, exploratory students use the university as an intellectual sandbox. If you know you dislike your prior trajectory but aren’t sure what comes next, business school gives you the breathing room to test hypotheses, discover emerging fields, talk with experts, and find clarity before committing to your next decade.
6. Sixth, it’s an incredible opportunity for high-density networking and community building. Very few environments live in the future as intensely as a university campus. There are a few places where there’s as much diversity of ideas, innovations, and people as a university campus. It’s a great place to spend time if your objective is to meet a bunch of people — whether that’s professionally (like you’re looking for investments or generally a larger professional network) or personally (like you just want to expand your social networks for non-professional reasons). Extracurriculars like clubs, conferences, and student government function as core parts of the curriculum itself: they build deep, lasting bonds with peers who will lead industries for decades. The concentration of ambitious, values-aligned people in their late twenties and early thirties also makes it a unique social ecosystem for building personal (read: romantic) relationships, if that’s what you’re looking for.

THE MBA AS A MOAT

I increasingly believe that the skills built in an MBA program are the same skills that are becoming more and more important in the age of AI.

Social skills are your moat, and an MBA program teaches you those social skills.

Don’t get me wrong – I spent a healthy portion of my MBA1 year taking computer science courses in Stanford’s School of Engineering. Probably too much time. While intellectually rewarding, technical execution clearly isn’t where human leverage will sit long-term.

As AI and agents handle more coding and technical work, the scarce, defensible skills will become people skills: your ability to effectively communicate your ideas, to persuade others, to coach people, to motivate teams, and to support your teammates.

An MBA is a fantastic place to build those skills.

More than anything, an MBA program is socially exhausting. It’s socially demanding by design. Spending nearly every waking hour with your peers across the classrooms, extracurriculars, and dorms rapidly refines your interpersonal awareness and skillset.

It’s a constant social exercise, and you walk away with extremely honed social skills, particularly the ability to adapt social skills based on your environment. I think in the age of AI, this ability to communicate and work with others effectively becomes only more important.

WHY I LEFT, DESPITE ALL THIS

My decision was essentially the result of using the MBA program exactly as it’s intended.

While I loved my job before the GSB, I found myself tunnel-visioned on the area I was working in. In an era where AI is upending every industry, being pigeonholed and tunnel-visioned in one specific area is risky, especially early in your career.

So, I came to the GSB with two clear priorities:

First, I wanted a textbook education in management. This is #4 above (the management and business craft itself). I didn’t want to learn how to be a manager by being a manager; I didn’t want my first experience coaching an underperformer, recruiting top talent, or pitching a board to be an exercise in trial and error (“learning on the job”). In simulation-heavy classes, I acted out those managerial scenarios, received constant feedback, and repeated the process until I felt confident in my abilities. I was RL’d.

Second, I wanted horizontal exploration. This is #5 and #6 above. As Sam Altman said, taking even just a year to explore what’s out there and learn broadly can be one of the best career moves you make. I spent 15 months treating Stanford and Silicon Valley as my own sandbox. I read papers, met researchers, spoke with founders and investors, and generally immersed myself horizontally across different technology verticals, expanding my area of knowledge from the single one I was tunnel-visioned on at work. My goal was simply to learn about interesting new things and meet cool people who were experts in those things.

Imagine how much you learn, and what different perspectives you build, when doing that for this long.

By the end of the first year, you finish the core academic curriculum of the MBA. The second year of an MBA is mostly spent doing three things: taking elective classes outside of the core business curriculum, deepening existing social ties, and recruiting for full-time jobs.

But through my first year, I had accomplished what I set out to do: I learned a ton of interesting new things, met more cool people than I could count, and, through the core curriculum, built the managerial and business skills I came for.

In doing this, I developed a strong conviction that the next frontier of computing requires moving beyond language: giving AI spatial intelligence. When the opportunity emerged to work on exactly that, alongside a world-class team of researchers and builders, the choice became clear.

I had built the foundational management skills I sought, broadened my technical horizons enough to build conviction, and found my dream job with my dream team. Spending a second year recruiting for opportunities when I already had the role I wanted didn’t make enough sense to me.

LOOKING AHEAD

Everyone comes to their MBA with different priorities and with different goals. Just because I felt I had accomplished enough of mine after my first year doesn’t mean you will.

If you’re considering an MBA to pivot industries, explore new spaces, build a company, meet great people, or develop your leadership toolkit, I think the full two-year journey totally makes complete sense.

I have zero regrets about entering the GSB, and I have zero regrets about leaving when I did. If I could go back, I’d always do that first year over again, given the goals I set out with. I wouldn’t have this next opportunity without the perspective, skills, and community Stanford provided during my MBA.

I don’t think higher education failed me, I think it just worked ahead of schedule.

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David Pantera was the student body president of the Stanford GSB and now is a product manager at Google DeepMind. His article originally was published at LinkedIn: read it here.