I was conservative before reading Ayn Rand but her books provided me the reasoning and understanding that supported my beliefs. She helped me counter the university profs who kept spouting the leftist line.
It was a great University at the time. I will never forget my hardest class. We spent a month on one question,analyzing a business to make it better.
When it came time to hand in the papers everyone asked the professor what the answer was cause no one seemed to know what to do to make the gift shop prosper. The answer...."nothing". There was really "no answer" to the question. There were things you could suggest but nothing to solve a basically an insoluble problem. I learned a lot from that class, and got an A.