If you like "leave", you will have to say something like "I left Oxford after a year and found a.job at Sotheby's." If you like "give up", you should say something like "I gave up Physics and switched to Modern Languages."

To me, it doesn't sound right to say 'I left my studies'. You can say 'leave' in this sense when there is a place involved, such as 'I left the gym club' or even suggested, such as 'I left my job'. As the object is 'studies', which doesn't really suggest a place, I think it is better to say 'gave up' here.

You can use "leave" to mean "abandon". It's perfectly natural. I would actually sooner say, "I gave up studying", even though your phrase is OK. The phrasal verb "give up" has a slightly flexible meaning (like many phrasal verbs), so we can't expect it to automatically give the meaning we want.

Frankly, I think native speakers use neither. They use "drop out". Here is an example, from the Telegraph's interview of John Mark Ainsley, the British tenor. QUOTE Grammar school after O-levels was "totally exam-led and much less fun", but it got him into Magdalen, Oxford, to read music. "I did a year and passed the exams, but plainly I wasn't cut out to be an academic. So I dropped out and went to sing as a lay clerk at Christ Church.". UNQUOTE The complete interview can be found here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/3561543/John-Mark-Ainsley-Im-up-for-just-about-anything.html Listen to his Messiah (done in his 20s) with Stephen Cleobury, as well as his "Where're you walk", both available on YouTube. That would be the best way to learn English - by cultural immersion, or slightly differently put, by breathing English air.