Elon Musk attended two universities during his college years. He briefly attended the University of Pretoria in South Africa before immigrating to Canada at age 18. After waiting for his Canadian passport application to be processed, he attended the University of Pretoria for five months. Two years later, he matriculated at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. After two years at Queens University, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he received bachelors degrees in economics and physics from the Wharton School.

Musk started a Ph.D. program in physics at Stanford University but left after two days to focus on being an entrepreneur.