Why an education of 27,000 pounds is worth it

A general piece of advice I give out to anyone when they doubt their career path is the following: Seriously reconsider what you’re doing. Do you want perform at the top level of your own capabilities? Are you working with the people you want to work with? Most of all, are you truly going after what you deserve?

If the answer to those questions is anything else than a solid yes, you need to read the following and move away from what you’re currently doing AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

I did it and I left for Cambridge for my graduate degree. Undergraduates pay 9000 pounds of tuition a year, which might sound substantial when you compare it to Dutch standards but is absolutely nothing when compared to the USA.

For 9000 pounds you get to participate in one of the best undergraduate degree programmes in the world with a solid college community full of new friends and incredible weekly supervisions with supervisors who can easily be an international leader of your field. Pretty much every week there’s another lecture from a Nobel prize winner or similarly-astonishing academic or professional. Christiana Amanpour, David Cameron, the prime minster of whatever other country: they come here. Acceptance rates for Cambridge are around 20 percent for undergrads and getting in is certainly not impossible.

Find what place in the world is the best for your field and invest in yourself! Who cares about the finances when it comes to investing in you? Who cares about ‘acceptance rates’? You are the biggest asset in the world. Someone like Suze Orman – a waitress turns broker – was worth nothing and is now worth 35 million dollars. Imagine what you would be worth and what impact you’d have if you did that with a top education at age 25!

The true question I have for you: Do you believe in yourself? Do you believe you can be the best of who you can be? If so, what are you doing at a place where this won’t come to full fruition?

I have met plenty of people with excellent GPAs who are unwilling to live their full potential out of fear and sheer stupidity. Yes. Fear is stupidity. Snap out of it.

Live your dream. Don’t waste your time regretting what you could have done. So: get your stuff together, be amazing at what you do whatever that is and go some place where you have the capability of improving yourself. Then I can guarantee you that your life will be beyond amazing. And that is worth whatever it costs.