Y Combinator begins “early decision” for students who want to graduate first and build later

For decades, Silicon Valley has been celebrating university dropouts. Founders such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg left school early and built businesses and became billionaires.

That spirit was later institutionalized through initiatives like the Thiel Fellowship. This will pay $100,000 to allow a promising student to leave the university and set up a company.

Over the years, the well-known accelerator Y-combinator has also quietly strengthened its culture. Many of the most successful alumni, including Drew Houston of Dropbox, Steve Huffman of Reddit, John and Patrick Collison of Stripes, Drew Houston of Dropbox and Steve Huffman of Reddit, never dropped out of school, but joined the program and left school.

Now, YC is changing that story.

Accelerator has introduced a new application track called Early Decision, designed for students who want to start a company but don’t want to drop out. The program allows them to apply while they are at school, be quickly accepted and funded, and postponed participation in YC until after graduation. For example, students applying in the fall of 2025 can graduate in Spring 2026 and participate in YC’s Summer 2026 batch.

“It’s designed for graduates who want to be a startup but want to graduate from school first,” said Jared Friedman, managing partner at YC, in the launch video.

Friedman added that the idea of ​​early decisions came from conversations with students. “We had a lot of opportunities to do that last summer, between the AI ​​Startup School and the over 20 university trips we’ve done over the past year. One of YC’s most common advice is to “talk to users.”

In Silicon Valley culture, dropout was a ritual of passing aspiring founder programs like the Thiel Fellowship turned it into a movement (although it is worth noting that Peter Thiel himself did not drop out, but received a degree in undergraduate and law from Stanford).

YC’s announcement is why leaving school early is a meaningful break from the myth that it is the best or only path to a startup’s success. Timing is also important, and comes when many young people question both the cost of college and the trade-offs of staying at school.

The new programme reflects an increasing maturity of how YC thinks about long-term founder outcomes.

Accelerators have long been the magnets of college builders. The founders of Loom, Instacart, Rappi, and Brex were in their teens or early 20s when they joined the program. However, the decision to drop out was often implicit. Program now or miss the opportunity.

Early decisions remove that pressure and provide an intermediate foundation between completing academics and chasing entrepreneurship. The move can include more careful and intentional student founders who are broadening the YC applicant pool and committing to startup life, but who are reluctant to sacrifice education to get there.