Some people know what they want to do from an early age and focus on it relentlessly.

Others are driven enough to reinvent themselves, changing careers and industries, and continuously push until they find the thing that works.

Billionaire Mark Cuban, for example, faced hardship when he first started, writing in "How To Win At The Sport Of Business" that "when I got to Dallas, I was struggling — sleeping on the floor with six guys in a three-bedroom apartment." On the other hand, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was a Xerox salesman dreaming of good coffee.

As a reminder that the path to success is not always linear, we've highlighted what Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, and 19 other fascinating and successful people were doing at age 25.

Martha Stewart was a stockbroker for the firm of Monness, Williams, and Sidel, the original Oppenheimer & Co.

Before her name was known in every American household, Martha Stewart worked on Wall Street for five years as a stockbroker. Before that, she was a model, booking clients from Unilever to Chanel.

"There were very few women at the time on Wall Street … and people talked about this glass ceiling, which I never even thought about," Stewart said in an interview for PBS's MAKERS series. "I never considered myself unequal, and I think I got a very good education being a stockbroker."

In 1972, Stewart left Wall Street to be a stay-at-home mom. A year later, she started a catering business.

Mark Cuban was a bartender in Dallas.

At age 25, Cuban had graduated from Indiana University and had moved to Dallas. He started out as a bartender, then a salesperson for a PC software retailer. He actually got fired because he wanted to go close a deal rather than open a store in the morning. That helped inspire him to open his first business, MicroSolutions.

“When I got to Dallas, I was struggling — sleeping on the floor with six guys in a three-bedroom apartment,” Cuban writes in his book “How to Win at the Sport of Business.” “I used to drive around, look at the big houses, and imagine what it would be like to live there and use that as motivation.”

Arianna Huffington was traveling to music festivals around the world for the BBC with her boyfriend at the time.

Before she was Arianna Huffington, she was Arianna Stassinopolous and at the age of 21, she met the famed British Journalist Henry Bernard Levin while on a panel for a quiz show.

The two entered into a relationship and he became her mentor while she wrote the book "The Female Woman" attacking the women's liberation movement. The book was published when she was 23.

For the next few years, Huffington traveled to music festivals around the world with Levin as he wrote for the BBC. Her relationship with Levin eventually ended because he did not want to marry or have children. Huffington moved to New York City at the age of 30. That year, her biography of Maria Callas was published, which she dedicated to Levin. 

She told William Skidelsky at The Observer:

"[Levin] was my mentor. Our second date was to see 'The Mastersingers' at Covent Garden. Our first trip abroad was to Bayreuth to see 'Wagner's Ring.'"

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. After a four-year reign atop our annual list of the Best Colleges in America, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) slipped to second place.

For the first time in years, Stanford University took the top spot on our list. In fact, schools with strong tech and engineering programs reigned over our list, with Caltech rounding out the top 3 schools.

For our sixth annual ranking of the Best Colleges In America, we surveyed over 1,500 people who said they had hiring experience in a variety of fields, from finance to tech. Respondents rated top colleges across the country based on how well they prepare students for success.

Click here to see the colleges »

Click here to go to a one-page list of the top 25 colleges »

Read the full methodology for this list »  

50. University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign

Illinois – Urbana-Champaign scored a 2.95 out of 5 on Business Insider's rating.

Tuition and fees: $30,362

Situated about 140 miles south of Chicago, University of Illinois debuts on this ranking at No. 50. The flagship U of I institution is home to one of the largest public university collections in the world, with more than 10.5 million volumes across 37 departmental libraries. The school ranked high on our list of party schools worth the money.

Business Insider's rating is scored out of 5 and is based on the results of a survey that asked over 1,500 professionals with hiring experience how well colleges prepare their students for success after graduation. Tuition was used as a tiebreaker, with cheaper tuition pushing a school to a higher spot.

49. Colgate University

Colgate scored a 2.96 out of 5 on Business Insider's rating.

Tuition and fees: $50,485

Colgate may cost a lot to attend, but evidence shows that it’s worth the investment, with graduates making an average mid-career salary of $126,600. And for those who can’t afford the cost of tuition, the Central New York college accommodates 100% of admitted students who demonstrated financial need.

Business Insider's rating is scored out of 5 and is based on the results of a survey that asked over 1,500 professionals with hiring experience how well colleges prepare their students for success after graduation. Tuition was used as a tiebreaker, with cheaper tuition pushing a school to a higher spot.

48. Boston University

BU scored a 2.98 out of 5 on Business Insider's rating.

Tuition and fees: $48,984

BU "is no small operation," with more than 33,000 undergrad and graduate students and 10,000 faculty and staff. With over $375 million in research funding last year, each member of the community has a chance to grow and incite change.

Business Insider's rating is scored out of 5 and is based on the results of a survey that asked over 1,500 professionals with hiring experience how well colleges prepare their students for success after graduation. Tuition was used as a tiebreaker, with cheaper tuition pushing a school to a higher spot.

Six years ago, the financial crisis crippled the American banking industry, and the devastating effects ripple across the world.

Businesses went down, and people lost their jobs.

But the memory of the key events of the financial crisis is slowly fading. Hearings, lawsuits, bailouts — it all gets muddled together.

Business Insider has outlined the major moments from 2007 to 2009.  

From the initial reports of subprime defaults to the collapse of Lehman Brothers to AIG's second bailout, here are the 27 scariest moments of the financial crisis.

Editor's Note: Former Business Insider reporter Steven Perlberg contributed to this feature.

FEB. 8, 2007: HSBC says its bad debt provisions exploded because of a slump in the U.S. housing market. Normal people begin to learn what subprime is.

Source: BBC

APRIL 2, 2007: New Century files for bankruptcy. It was the largest subprime lender in the United States.

Source: SEC Filing

JUNE 21, 2007: Merrill Lynch sells off assets in two Bear Stearns hedge funds as the funds hemorrhage billions of dollars on bad subprime bets.

Source: Reuters

The shopping mall isn't the only place where consumers blow cash on pointless purchases.

"We're likely to spend money on something we don't need if we get what we think is a good deal and assume the item might be handy at some point," says Danielle Lescure, a professional organizer. 

Stumped on whether it's worth the cash? Ask yourself two questions:

-Does it serve a real purpose? 

-Do I have somewhere to keep it?

With the items on our list, your answers had better be NO. 

Cable TV

With the advent of Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, video game shortcuts, Apple TV, and just about every major TV network posting shows online, there's hardly a reason to splurge on a fancy DVR system or even basic cable–so long as you're willing to be patient. 

Most shows are added at least 24-hours after airing and some networks won't give them up until eight days. 

See 15 great alternatives to cable TV here.

Bank Fees

Banks clearly love to slap you with fees at the drop of a hat, but that doesn't mean you've got to put up with it.

"Consider going with a credit union, which are better than banks in many ways, to avoid some of these fees," says Andrew Schrage, founder of MoneyCrashers.com.

"If you travel abroad often, make sure you use credit cards without foreign transaction fees, otherwise you'll be paying an extra 3% to 5% on all your purchases." 

Extended Warranties

Retailers push hard to sell you extended warranties— and conveniently pump up their sales figures at the same time.

Don't do it, Schrage warns. 

"The only instance I'd recommend a warranty is in the case of a laptop. Otherwise, the warranties themselves can often cost as much as simply buying a used or new replacement for your item, or repairing it," he added.  

Harvard is one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts, school accepted just 5.9% of roughly 34,000 applications for its class of 2018. As Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust recently said, "We could fill our class twice over with valedictorians."

The school seeks out students who not only have high grades, but also have outstanding achievements under their belts — from overcoming homelessness to starting their own nonprofits. The students who manage to catch the attention of admissions officers overcome exceptional odds, but they should maintain some perspective.

Many things in life — like landing a job at some Wal-Mart locations — are harder to achieve than getting into that prestigious university.

A Job At Some Wal-Mart Locations

Met with both merriment and protest, Wal-Mart came to Washington, D.C., at the end of 2013. 

The store received more than 23,000 applications but hired just 600 associates, NBC Washington reported. That's a 2.6% acceptance rate — almost twice as selective as Harvard's.

While many Harvard graduates can expect a six-figure income, Wal-Mart employees pocket an average of $11.83 an hour or nearly $25,000 annually, according to the company.

The Top 50 Posts On A Friend's Newsfeed

When Facebook compiles your Newsfeed, it chooses from roughly 1,500 different posts.

The company uses an algorithm based on the popularity and relevance of posts, along with other factors, to decide what goes where.

The chances of a certain post finding its way into the top 50 stories on someone's Newsfeed is about 3.3%.

If you want to boost your chances, posts with photos do far better than links or text-based posts.

The American Dream

A recent report from researchers at Harvard and Berkeley Universities shows that in many major US cities, it's very hard to achieve a rags-to-riches success story. 

The report analyzes the number of people who were born into the lowest income quintile but ended up in the highest income quintile. The results don't bode well for upward socioeconomic mobility.

The chances were below 5% in Atlanta; Charlotte, North Carolina; Jacksonville, Florida; Columbus, Ohio; Dayton, Ohio; Milwaukee; and Indianapolis.

Even at the top of the list, people in San Jose, California, showed just a 12.9% chance of living the American dream.

Click here to see the photos >>

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Now that it's September, it's time for fall favorites like "The Big Bang Theory" and "Modern Family" to return to TV along with a list of new shows.

Which casts are making the most money?

TV Guide recently released its annual salary report highlighting the paychecks of dozens of actors and TV personalities.

Salaries are estimated by looking at an actor's reported pay per episode and combining it with the number of episodes set for the coming season.

See what Kate Walsh and Debra Messing are making to return to TV, plus the major salary bump for the cast of "The Big Bang Theory."

29. Claire Danes: $3 million

Television Show: "Homeland"

Season: 4

Reported Salary: $250,000 / episode

Episodes this season: 12

Danes has won two Golden Globes and three Emmys for her role as Carrie Mathison on the Showtime series. Season 4 has a lot riding on it as the series tries to return to its glory days before the show began deviating from its original intention as a CIA show.

28. Amy Poehler: $3.25 million

Television Show: "Parks and Recreation"

Season: 7

Reported Salary: $250,000 / episode

Episodes this season: 13

For the show's final season, Poehler gets a reported $50,000-per episode raise, but that's probably because the show was given only a 13-episode order. Unfortunately, this fall show won't return until midseason.

27. Kerry Washington: $3.3 million

Television Show: "Scandal"

Season: 4

Reported Salary: $150,000 / episode

Episodes this season: 22

The third season of Shonda Rhimes' juicy drama received the show's highest ratings yet, with 10.5 million tuning into the ABC show.

Four centuries ago, a whole country went completely crazy for tulip bulbs.

But why do we still talk about these flower-obsessed Dutch traders.

As you'll read, the story of tulipmania involves many timeless issues like behavioral biases, malfunctioning markets, inequality, and basic economic concepts like supply and demand imbalances.

Dutch tulips were the first speculative asset to see prices shoot through the roof, and then quickly crash.

And of course they weren't the last.

With the help of historian Anne Goldgar's 2007 "Tulipmania," Business Insider brings you this unusual and enlightening story.

Editor's Note: Former Business Insider writer Rob Wile contributed to an earlier version of this feature.

According to lore, Tulipmania had its roots in the Ottoman Empire when Suleiman the Magnificent noticed a flower.

An ambassador working at the court of Suleiman the Magnificent noticed the flower, which is native to Central Asia, was all over Constantinople. In the late 1500s, he decided to send some to a Botanist friend in Leiden, Clusius. 

Source: Anne Goldgar, "Tulipmania"

Collecting stuff in general — from art to sea shells — was already big when Tulips began popping up in Europe.

Clusius told his sea merchant friends to pick up odd fish for him on their travels, and would exchange rare plants for "medals or unusual man-made objects."

Source: Anne Goldgar, "Tulipmania"

And there was also already robust trading platforms in Amsterdam.

The Amsterdam stock exchange opened in 1602. The Baltic grain trade, which had helped lead to the creation of the Dutch East India Company, had been operating as an informal futures exchange for decades.

Source: Anne Goldgar, "Tulipmania"

The job of an airman includes a long list of responsibilities, and commanders want to ensure that their troops develop their minds along with their combat prowess.

To help guide servicemembers in their training, the Air Force's top general, the Air Force Chief of Staff, publishes a list of various works to help guide members to topics relevant to the life of an airman. The list changes yearly and contains a multitude of works ranging from military-centric to advice on life and career skills. 

Unlike the Marine Corps and Army Lists that we have previously covered, the Air Force list includes not only books but also works of art, movies, and even TED talks. We went through and selected the 11 most important and interesting works in the list and offer a brief glimpse into each piece. 

"Band of Brothers" by HBO

"Band of Brothers" is an HBO Emmy-winning miniseries produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks and is based on the book by Stephen E. Ambrose. The series follows "Easy Company" of the 101st Airborne Division from jump training to their time spent fighting in Europe during World War II.

The series offers a dramatic look into the personal lives of men at war, and the issues they face. The book was based on countless personal interviews with the men of "Easy Company," and the series continues in that vein with many interviews and recollections from the veterans depicted in the series. The interviews with the men, almost 60 years removed from the war they fought, sets the series apart as powerful filmmaking. 

Buy it here >

"Inside Combat Rescue" by National Geographic

The Air Force's pararescuemen are an elite group of individuals and some of the strongest and toughest members of the Air Force and the U.S. military. The mission of pararescue, or PJs as they are commonly called, is to rescue forces in danger, whether they are trapped behind enemy lines or in hostile territory.

The documentary from National Geographic follows a group of PJs during a tour in Afghanistan. The documentarians embed with the PJs during their missions, which allows the viewers to see the PJs in action first-hand. It's a fascinating look into a group who make their motto "that others may live" a part of their daily lives.

Buy it here >

"The Invisible War" by Kirby Dick

Documentarian Kirby Dick received the U.S. Documentary Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and his second nomination for Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards for his work "The Invisible War." In it, he tackles the pernicious issue of sexual assault in the military.

The film is so moving that two days after watching it, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta held a press conference to discuss changes to the way the military handles sexual assault. This is an important film about an issue that still plagues the military and will likely leave you infuriated after watching it. 

Buy it here >

The People For the Ethical Treatment of animals do a lot of "shockvertising": using controversial images to burrow a message into your brain, by way of nearly naked people, bloody animal corpses, or an intensely dark sense of humor. 

The nonprofit revels in its audacity, putting together websites to promote ads that have been banned or rejected.

Though they turn plenty of heads, do some of their ads go over the line? PETA has been slammed for objectifying women, which may alienate potential new followers.

What do you think? Be warned — not all of these will be safe for work. 

Kim Bhasin contributed to an earlier version of this article.

This spot showed the link between purchase and poaching. 'Poaching is driven by demand. So the day you stop buying, they stop killing.' (Singapore, 2014).

This gruesome ad shows where fur comes from. 'Poaching is driven by demand. So the day you stop buying, they stop killing.' (Singapore, 2014).

It goes for menswear, too. 'Poaching is driven by demand. So the day you stop buying, they stop killing.' (Singapore, 2014).

There are a bunch of ways to get high-speed information about markets. Most of them — like getting a Bloomberg terminal, for instance — will cost you an arm and a leg.

Thankfully, there's Twitter. It's become a place where even the biggest names on Wall Street go to get a word (or 143 characters) out into the universe, and it can move markets.

Business Insider has compiled a list of the best of financial Tweeters for you to use. These are people we follow all day, and if you're going to get serious about using this awesome tool, you should follow them too.

Or even better, you join the conversation yourself.

But you'd better add some value.

Pawel Morski

Handle:@Pawelmorski

Occupation: Veteran fund manager 

Why: He dominates Twitter when it comes to emerging markets and currencies. 

David Powell

Handle:@davidjpowell24

Occupation: Euro-area economist at Bloomberg LP and author of: A Trader's Guide to the Euro Area: Economic Indicators, the ECB and the Euro Crisis.

Why: The Euro crisis isn't really over. 

The Skeptic

Handle: @TheSkeptic

Occupation: ---

Why: His tweets on Bill Ackman's infamous Herbalife short were so good that the media raced to uncover his identity.

One of the biggest barriers to mobile payments is that merchants have had a hard time figuring out which technology to adopt.

With Apple Pay, a new NFC-powered mobile payments system, that could change. In new research from BI Intelligence, we explain why near field communication is important, and why Apple Pay's use of it could help solve the chicken-and-egg problem in mobile payments. 

BI Intelligence is a research and analysis service focused on e-commerce, mobile computing, digital media, and payments. Only subscribers can download our full research on Apple Pay and NFC as well as the individual charts and datasets in Excel, along with the PowerPoint version of this deck. Please sign up for a free trial here.

New Zealand scientists at Te Papa museum dissected an almost 800-pound colossal squid on Sept. 16. This was the second of these giants ever to be found intact. Both were dragged out of the Ross Sea, off the freezing coast of Antarctica.

Colossal squid, with their eight arms and two tentacles, both covered in fearsome rotating hooks, are the largest tentacled creatures in the ocean as measured by weight. The first one ever found, in 2007, weighed in at almost 1,100 pounds.

Giant squid are frequently cited as being longer — an 1887 scientific paper claimed they measured one at 55 feet long — but it's unclear if those measurements are accurate. And with so few colossal specimens ever examined and the variations and changes in body size that occur after death, researchers say they would need to examine many more colossal squid to really understand how large they can grow.

Fishermen hauled the first intact colossal squid into the San Aspiring fishing boat on February 22, 2007, off the coast of Antarctica. At the time, they measured it at about 33 feet and just over 1000 pounds.

This monster had been eating a Patagonian toothfish on the line it was pulled in on. Like the giant squid, these cephalapods battle sperm whales deep in the ocean. The first colossal squid tentacles ever seen were pulled from the belly of whale in 1925.

Though this one is the largest colossal specimen ever found, it is a male — female squid are generally bigger.

With its staggering scope and scale, Ramstein Air Base in Germany is one of America's most important and fascinating military facilities.

Located in southwestern Germany, it serves not only as the headquarters of the US Air Force in Europe and a NATO installation but also as a gateway to American military operations around the globe.

The base is part of a conglomeration of 12 Army and Air Force installations that make up the Kaiserslautern Military Community (KMC). This community, also known as K-Town, hosts almost 54,000 Americans across 300 neighboring German towns and cities, turning the Rhineland-Palatinate state of Germany into a tiny slice of America. The area has the largest concentration of Americans outside of the US, though it's also notably multicultural, including personnel from many countries.

Over two days in September, Business Insider was given an extensive and breathtaking tour of the base and its operations. 

Ramstein Air Base is a central hub of international US operations ranging from West Africa and Europe to Afghanistan, with almost 33,000 aircraft passing through the base in 2013 alone. After spending some days on base, we were blown away by how much happens there.

Ramstein is run by the 86th Airlift Wing, which is composed of six groups and 27 squadrons. The 37th Blue Tail Flies Airlift Squadron, which is part of the 86th, is a dedicated airlift unit that moves everything from hurricane evacuees to firetrucks to pieces of artillery.

The 37th flies the C-130J "Super" Hercules transport plane. The 86th has 14 of these aircraft.

If you want to trade the markets you have to live the markets — that means turning your trading desk into your second home.

That's why we put out a call to our readers to send in pictures of their oh-so-important spaces, and the response was just awesome.

The desks came in from Croatia to Chicago, Brazil to Switzerland. You sent us everything from massive desks with a bunch of screens to killer views that likely make the day go by a lot faster.

Thanks. Keep 'em coming.

If you would like to include your trading desk set up, feel free to send an email to jlaroche@businessinsider.com and llopez@businessinsider.com with a photo and a brief description. 

This set-up comes from a trader in Switzerland. He uses Interactive Brokers to trade stocks and options and uses various market data tools. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 shown is also running Interactive Brokers for his mobile needs.

This desk comes from a trader in Macedonia. This trading desk is an all Apple setup and consists of an iMac 27” mid 2011 edition (for charts) , MacBook Air 13” 2013 edition (trading room activities) , iPad 2 (for news). In addition you will see an iPhone 5 and a e-cigarette.

Here's a European natural gas trading operation. This desk is based in Prague, Czech Republic.

Jeff Wilson lives in a dumpster.

It's not what it sounds like: Wilson is an environmental science professor and dean at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas, and he's working with his students and a team of experts to transform that dumpster into a sustainable home that costs under $10,000.

He uses the alter-ego "Professor Dumpster."

"Professor Dumpster will be spending one year in a dumpster that is approximately 6 feet x 6 feet, or about 1% the size of the average new American home. Professor Dumpster, in his bid to become part of the 'new 1%' will strive to use 1% the water, 1% the energy, and create 1% the waste of the average American home,"reads The Dumpster Project website.

We first came across Wilson over at The Atlantic, where they describe his downsizing from a 2,500-square-foot house to a 500-square-foot apartment and finally to the 36-square-foot dumpster. For reference, that's 152 square feet less than the self-proclaimed "world's smallest house" in London, 204 square feet less than a typical $30,000 tiny house, and 92 square feet smaller than the tiny house in which a Business Insider reporter spent the weekend with her mom.

We were so intrigued by Wilson's project that we reached out to Team Dumpster to see if it had photos to share. We've published them here with the group's permission.

The Dumpster Project will be completed in three phases, starting when Wilson took occupancy in February 2014: camping in a bare-bones dumpster (shown here); living in a dumpster "home," with additions such as storage and a bed; and then fine-tuning the dumpster into the ultimate sustainable home.

Earlier in stage two, the project's current stage, a fake floor was installed to store Wilson's belongings and limited wardrobe.

Later in this stage, the dumpster will be hooked up to electricity and water. Measurements will be taken of how much of these resources Wilson requires to be comfortable.

Once you finish your written speech or PowerPoint slides, you're only halfway done preparing a great presentation.

When you're in front of an audience, a lack of confidence can compel you to nervously rush through your material, forgetting along the way that the purpose of a presentation is to benefit your audience.

By not only committing your presentation to memory, but also practicing proper body language you'll appear more relaxed and in control.

The experts at SOAP Presentations in São Paulo, Brazil, compiled the following presentation on the most important body language techniques to look like a natural in front of your boss, colleagues, and clients.

We've published the slides here with SOAP's permission.

After MIT's four-year reign atop our annual list of the Best Colleges in America, our readers voted Stanford University as the No. 1 college in America. 

To create this list, we asked over 1,500 professionals who have hiring experience in a variety of industries what they consider to be the best colleges in the U.S. based on how well the schools prepare their students for success after graduation. 

Here are the top 25 colleges in the U.S. this year.

Take a more in-depth look at all 50 best colleges in America »

SEE ALSO: Visit our Best Colleges homepage to get the scoop on the schools

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