Graduating with a technical degree is like heading out into the real world armed with an assault rifle instead of a dull knife. Don't miss that opportunity because of some fuzzy romanticized view of liberal arts broadening your horizons.

All successful CEOs are like this. They are almost never the best product visionaries, or the best salespeople, or the best marketing people, or even the best managers, but they are top 25% in some set of those skills, and then all of a sudden they're qualified to actually run something important.

Learn to sell — meaning, learn how to convince people that something is in their best interest to do, even when they don't realize it up front. John Doerr told Andreessen that the year he spent 'carrying a bag' in sales at Intel in the late 70's was the most valuable year of his life in terms of skills development.

Engineers and technical people often quaintly believe that the world works logically and that people will automatically recognize the quality of things. Ha! Communication is underrated precisely because most people never take it seriously as a skill to develop — and an engineer or lawyer who can communicate is hugely more valuable than one who cannot.

On why communication should be one of your top skills.

Always be in the best pond possible — don't worry about being a small fish. If you can't start at a top school, transfer in; if you can't transfer, get your graduate degree at one. Even starting at a community college, in 4–6 years you can vault into the top tier of your field.

If you've lived an orchestrated existence — great schools, packed extracurriculars, elite university — you're in danger of entering the real world, being smacked hard across the face by reality, and never recovering. You've worked hard, but you've never made tough decisions in the absence of good information and lived with the consequences of screwing up.

Expose yourself to real risk early — situations where you'll succeed or fail by your own decisions, visibly. Getting yelled at in front of peers, shipping a product that tanks, getting fired: these can't faze you. Being able to get right back up and keep going may be the most valuable skill you ever learn.

Graduate degrees are overrated if you already have a useful undergrad degree. Most people who have huge impact on the world — outside pure research and education — do not have PhDs. Draw whatever conclusion you think makes sense.