Y Combinator launches “Early Decision” for students who want to graduate first, build later

For decades, Silicon Valley has valorized the college dropout. Founders like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg left school early to build companies and became billionaires.

That ethos was later institutionalized through initiatives like the Thiel Fellowship, which famously pays promising students $100,000 to leave college and start companies.

For many years, the famed accelerator Y Combinator also quietly reinforced that culture. While it never explicitly required students to drop out, many of its most successful alumni, including Dropbox’s Drew Houston, Reddit’s Steve Huffman, and Stripe’s John and Patrick Collison, joined the program young and left school behind to build their companies.

Now, YC is changing that narrative.

The accelerator has introduced a new application tr