Zara Dar Drops Out of PhD to Become OnlyFans Model, Reveals She’s Made Over $1 Million

In a shocking career change, YouTube personality Zara Dar has announced that she is dropping out of her PhD program to pursue being an OnlyFans model full time. Zara, who formerly created a platform as an advocate for women in science and technology, detailed the emotional journey behind her decision in a recent YouTube video titled “PhD Dropout to OnlyFans Model.”

The 26-year-old, who amassed over 1 lakh subscribers on YouTube for her tutorials on machine learning and neural networks, revealed that her decision to leave academia was not made lightly. “I’ve cried so much over this decision to quit my PhD. It’s a stressful decision, not that I’m particularly sad,” Zara said in the video.

Zara Dar Drops Out of PhD

Despite her academic and tech background, Zara Dar felt that continuing on her PhD path wasn’t in line with her long-term vision. She said she never saw herself being in academia or a corporate job after all the years she spent in graduate school. People whose lifestyles I thought I envied are tied to someone else’s vision,” she noted, adding that many professionals spend their lives working for companies or in academia, where their work may contribute to someone else’s success, leaving them unrecognized.

For Zara Dar, the attraction of working in a corporate office or academia was not strong enough to overcome the feeling of being constrained by expectations from the outside. She needed the freedom to explore her interests and be free from the shackles of an institutional or corporate environment. “By choosing not to pursue academia or a tech job, I can explore and learn about topics that interest me, not just those deemed important by a funding agency,” she said.

However, it was not the intellectual freedom that attracted her to OnlyFans. The financial success she achieved in content creation played a significant role in her decision. Zara revealed that she had been creating content for OnlyFans while still pursuing her PhD. In the process, she earned over $1 million, money that she used to pay off her family’s mortgage and buy a car. “I avoided taking out student loans and now have an investment portfolio. I’m planning to buy my own house,” Zara added.

She reflects on her financial success; she said she feels the fruits of what she had done, she felt free, and how she compared that to the more typical professor’s life in the United States, who probably earns about $100,000 a year but writes proposals for grants rather than research. That was never the life she wanted.

Her video, which was reposted on X (formerly Twitter), has garnered nearly a million views, with many viewers expressing shock at how a career in adult content could be more financially rewarding than traditional career paths. Zara’s story has sparked widespread debate, with many questioning societal norms about success and career choices.

This shift, according to the landscape of the new age digital world where unorthodox routes into career choices open doors toward financial independence and self-actualization, explains Zara leaving academics for the full-time job at OnlyFans. In the recent times of OnlyFans, she still refuses to back down with pride regarding the same and its advantages.