10 ms·

MIT is a national treasure

525 points by hoag 16y ago

light3 16y ago
"he never got he never got a high school degree" This sentence tripped me up. I vividly remember some of the more boring classes where you end up staring at the clock, for some subjects I actually tried to put in the least effort possible to achieve 80%. I wish I had those years back to do follow something I really enjoyed doing.
- unwind 16y ago
  It tripped me up too, but for the (to me more obvious) reason that the "he never got" is repeated. Does that make sense to everyone but me? Or am I just being silly/obnoxious for complaining about (what I think is) an editing error in an article with an actual point? Or is meant like "he never understood that he never got a high school degree"? I'm not a native speaker of English, and the missing "that" in the linked-to article makes this interpretation feel unlikely to me. Confusing.
sliverstorm 16y ago
Honestly speaking, if he played around on an Apple II, this happened almost 30 years ago when the computer industry was still brand-new. Not to denigrate him, his achievements, or MIT, but the world is different now. It's an awesome anecdote, and I am a big fan of MIT, but consider this my preemptive counter-argument to the inevitable, "Here, see, more proof of why you should drop out of high school!" (though, after all's said and done, I do hope MIT is not too different from the MIT that accepted him back then)
- sajithw 16y ago
  This blog post makes it sound like he didn't fill out an application. However, I'm guessing he did and also sent in code as supplemental material (which is quite common). College admissions is a game. I currently go to MIT and it's definitely more meritocratic than many other institutions of similar "prestige" but it's not an exception. High school students today optimize their grades and SATs and after school activities. They speak French and Chinese, play piano and paint abstract art. They dance around and play hockey and act like they help homeless people. It's ultra-competitive. That said, the number of kids who do this sort of thing is waning. I think people realize that being extremely good or having insane dedication to one thing or "theme" is key. On the other hand this stereotype arose from an era where admissions committees were trying to create a class of well-rounded students. It still occurs to some degree. However, things are trending towards creating a well-rounded class instead (lots of highly specialized students).
- michael_dorfman 16y ago
  This. I, too, got into college without graduating high school, based on some software I wrote on an Apple II. It wasn't MIT, but that's kind of the point-- many schools are open to non-traditional students who impress them in some way. And back in those days, I imagine the bar was a lot lower in terms of what kind of code it took to impress (due to Moore's Law, as much as anything else...)
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Guess I should have submitted my Apple II code to MIT in the mid-80's... Too bad that, even if I did it now, they probably won't be able to read my Apple II floppies (I am afraid I won't be able to read them anymore - and I have a couple Apple IIs in my collection) :-/ How many of us wrote a window manager with 1K of 6502 code?
    - tluyben2 16y ago
      Z80, using HEX only. That was great. And no internet needed, just some magazines and BBS printouts.
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        I confess I kind of cheated. I used William F. Luebbert's "What's Where in the Apple II" to find routines in ROM suitable to what I wanted to do. You can grab yours at http://apple2scans.net/apple-ii/whats-where-in-the-apple/ http://apple2scans.net/apple-ii/whats-where-in-the-apple/
    - Graham24 16y ago
      I did on the C64, prob more than 1K mind you. It allowed you to create a bordered window of any size and colour, write text directly to it and when it was closed, as if by magic, the text that was behind it was still there! I think you could have 8 such windows open at the same time. I was rather pleased with it at the time.
- astrofinch 16y ago
  In California, you can take the CHSPE http://chspe.net/ http://chspe.net/ to enroll in community college as young as 16. California has made it really easy to transfer from community colleges to UC schools. Transferring in to UC Berkeley's computer science program is very doable, especially if you apply through its College of Letters and Science (which you want to do anyway, since they are a lot more lenient than the College of Engineering in terms of letting you take time off and choosing the classes that interest you). Advantages of this route: * You can skip 2 years of high school and graduate with a BA while your high school friends are finishing their second years of college. * You save money living with your parents and going to community college for the first 2 years. * Your chances of getting in to a prestigious UC actually increase quite substantially. This is roughly what I did and I've been extremely happy about it. Feel free to contact me for details/individual advice: [my username] at gmail dot com
  - notyourwork 16y ago
    Which leaves you with a BA instead of a BS and on a less technical level than the alternative route would take. This appears no different than CIS through Arts & Sciences versus CSE through Engineering at alma mater.
    - mattdeboard 16y ago
      Honestly though, will this really mean anything a year after graduating? Sincere question. I don't have a CS degree (or any bachelors degree) though I am pursuing one. The drumbeat seems to be that the most important lessons one learns with a BS in CS is the algorithms classes. Would a BA not deliver those classes to its students?
      - eliben 16y ago
        As a recruiting manager, I never really made any distinction between BA/BS/B.Sc/whatever. A degree from a good school with good grades is good enough, it isn't critical what the degree is called exactly. CS isn't Physics where you should have lots of years of study to actually be able to do something useful.
- colanderman 16y ago
  I'm only 25 yet I taught myself how to program on an Apple //e in elementary and middle schools. Furthermore, today's computing environments are arguably less conducive to autodidactism. When the Apple II booted it dropped you at a BASIC prompt.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    > today's computing environments are arguably less conducive to autodidactism I believe this fact cannot be overestimated.
    - zoul 16y ago
      When I was learning to program there was no Internet and there were preciously few technical books on the market. Often I had to resort to trial and error, where error could easily mean watching my machine rebooting, since there was little memory protection. Obviously I now see the world with different eyes, but it seems to me that today's computing world is much more suited to self-learning.
      - iqster 16y ago
        You're right in that there are more learning resources - ebooks and lectures galore! However, the complexity of software systems has increased quite a bit too. This complexity, and the ensuing layers of abstraction are enemies to learning IMHO. Here's a personal anecdote ... I remember having a vague understanding of MFC for a number of years, until one day I came across a manual of MFC 1.0. For whatever reason, I went through the old book and came out with a strong understanding of main class structure and motivation behind the framework. I was a bit surprised that the tomes on the subject (and I had many of the latest at that time) were thick but lack some of the essential ideas.
        kenjackson 16y ago
        But web development, while very abstract, is very simple. Sure there are tons of frameworks, but you can still do great stuff with just css/html/jquery/server. And the amount of stuff on the web makes it that much easier.
- nupark 16y ago
  Figuring out a way around the standardized admissions process is the admissions process for nonstandard applicants. This is no different than anything else in life, from job applications to pitching a client, and the world hasn't changed as much as you seem to imply.
  - DavidChouinard 16y ago
    > Figuring out a way around the standardized admissions process is the admissions process. So true.
- araneae 16y ago
  Agreed. My dad didn't have a high school degree- or even a GED- and he got a full scholarship to UMass Amherst. It wasn't that unusual.
- sidek 16y ago
  Actually, someone I know got into MIT after Grade 11 due to mathematics competition achievements/math work in general. That happened this year.
- tomlin 16y ago
  "Here, see, more proof of why you should drop out of high school!" I actually love these stories for a different reason. If your interests are specific, you find most classes boring, repetitive, unhelpful and you have passion for your interests - the school system fails you big time. It pains me to see our society viscerally and religiously touting high school education when it doesn't satisfy a high minority of minds. If we can add some light to that and possibly change the system for the better, less of us would be dropping out and actually touting high school as useful because it actually would be.
  - timtadh 16y ago
    Not to belittle those whom the school system is the failing, but he wasn't in the school system. The blog post notes there was no school close enough for him to go to. It could be since the area was rural the majority of the kids engaged in agriculture/worked after 8th grade with a minority leaving to attend school in a nearby town. Perhaps you could argue the school system did fail him because there wasn't one close by. However, I think your comment was meant in the spirit of schools that fail there students like so many do in Cleveland (where I live).
- sanj 16y ago
  Not quite 30, closer to 18. Tom appears to have been in the class of 97. I played around on an Apple ][ and I was class of '94. I suspect Tom and I just started in our early teens.
- Anechoic 16y ago
  >Honestly speaking, if he played around on an Apple II, this happened almost 30 years ago The only Thomas Pinckney in the Alumni directory has a graduation year of 1996/1997 (two degrees, so it fits with the linked story).
- cdixon 16y ago
  the guy built the exokernal project at MIT. you work with the tools you have. Apple 2 at the time and later radically new OSs.
rdouble 16y ago
Philip Greenspun also entered MIT after dropping out of high school.
- mnazim 16y ago
  I honestly believe our education systems(those that I know about) most of the time end up keeping some of the best people behind. The idea of degrees and diplomas where everything is depends on scores achieved in a set of examination is utterly counter productive in my opinion. I hate it when I see people worrying about grades without understanding what those grades actually mean.
  - hn_is_dumb 16y ago
    The vast majority of the "best people" cruise through our education systems. The few who truly don't fit the mold usually end up making it if they are genuinely exemplary. Low caliber people then hide behind these few outliers to try to rationalize their own lack of ability and academic mediocrity. "I suck at everything but I know I'm smart cuz <famous_person> also didn't like school." Everybody wants a medal. And when they don't get one, they blame everything but themselves.
- iqster 16y ago
  I did not realize that! I was just reading some of his old blog posts this morning. He's pretty impressive. http://philip.greenspun.com/school/tuition-free-mit.html http://philip.greenspun.com/school/tuition-free-mit.html http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/octopus.html http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/octopus.html
user24 16y ago
It's not so unusual, I was accepted into my Computer Science MSc (at Oxford) without a CS background - I did have a first class BA, but it was a joint honours in IT and Philosophy from a more-or-less unknown university (Lampeter). Anyone who knows CS will know that IT is nothing like CS. I didn't have any A-Levels either. Masters degrees are a lot more forgiving, and I had some experience in software engineering. (edit: this was year of 2009, and yes, I passed ;0) )
- bhickey 16y ago
  It's rare, but not unheard of even outside of CS. A friend of mine is finishing up his degree at Brown University having never graduated from high school. Instead he joined up and did three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as a pararescueman. The university has a program in place for students who experience an interruption (family, work, service, etc.) in their education. http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Dean_of_the_College/advising/rue.php http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Dean_of_the_College/advi...
- arethuza 16y ago
  I don't know if this applies to the course you did but there used to be a lot of "conversion course" MSc courses in CS related areas in the UK. These were very much targeted at people who did not have a background in CS.
  - user24 16y ago
    yeah I think those courses do still exist, mine was a straight-up MSc though.
amnigos 16y ago
This should be an eye opener for all those bookish/only SAT score people.
jister 16y ago
While this is fascinating let's not forget that other people are NOT like Tom. Education is important and we shouldn't dismiss it if we have an opportunity to take it.
bfe 16y ago
Someone I know well was recruited on full scholarship to Cornell as a math student in 2007, even though he was a high school dropout.
- Alex3917 16y ago
  There is some ridiculous story about how the guy who founded Burger King got into Cornell. Apparently the head of the mycology department had written some article 20 years earlier in a trade journal saying that anyone who did X, Y, and Z would get an automatic in to the university, and the guy came along and did these things even though he was otherwise completely unqualified.
arihant 16y ago
To all the comments here - I don't think Chris is making a point against schooling. He's sort of implicitly making a point against resume padding. Resume padding is not a healthy thing and such examples could enlighten a lot of high school students.
- bfe 16y ago
  I think another way of looking at this is in parallel with Ben Horowitz's dictum, in the context of hiring, to look for strength rather than lack of weakness. I think in school admissions or hiring, there's a trade-off in the end of trying to find the best people in terms of the most impressive lack of weakness in any area versus the most impressive strength in at least one area. The more bureaucratic the process becomes, the more it tends to favor screening for lack of weakness. There's a corresponding tension on the candidate side in how to prioritize the record of accomplishment one seeks to develop to prepare for a desired school admission or job, in how much effort to devote to shoring up any potential weaknesses versus how much effort to devote to pursuing capabilities and accomplishments centered on one's core competency. Sometimes that choice might take the form of whether to procrastinate less consequential pursuits to focus all one's effort on the most important thing one knows of to work on at that time, and sometimes that neglect of other pursuits can make a difference not just in degree but in kind, like pg talks about in "Good and Bad Procrastination". The danger is that all college admissions processes are becoming homogenized and over-bureaucratized to the point of excessively screening for lack of weakness, to the point of never fairly considering a candidate's record of profound intellectual accomplishment because all the right boxes on their record aren't checked off, and that students are calibrating their intellectual pursuits accordingly. The glory of MIT in this example is that it avoided that over-bureaucracy of the process at least in this instance. Obviously you can say well, any really gifted student should devote all necessary effort to a well-rounded education and SAT prep and extra-curricular activities as well as develop clear accomplishments in a core interest, and should be able to do well at it all. There's always a trade-off at some point though; and I think many of the greatest intellectual accomplishments have come from people who didn't consistently devote large chunks of their schedule to a diverse portfolio of widely varying subjects and activities.
jarekr 16y ago
Speaking as someone who applied for MIT a few years ago, something like this is no longer possible and the "rat race" description used for comparision is now in fact valid for MIT as well. Nowhere in the recrutation process you have much possiblity to show your "software code" - everything is very formalized and you have to submit your grades, essays on specified topics, pass the SATs and go through a interview (but the interviewer doesn't have to know anything about the discipline you want to study). Yes, you can describe your most interesting projects as part of your application, but if you read the admission blogs and other MIT materials, it is quite clearly implied that unless you have near-perfect grades and/or near-perfect SAT scores, they won't even look at the project descriptions, essays etc. Also there is no way of knowing why you were accepted or rejected, because the whole proccess is 100% opaque to the outside world. I still think the MIT is awesome and the admission process probably has to look more or less like it looks like because of the volume of applications they have to go through. But the post and some of the comments seem to leave the impression that the MIT addmission comitee will look at every person as a "unique snowflake" to find the really outstanding candidates. In reality, the admission process has to be quite mechanical so that they can at all manage it and only after the initial 90% of the applications gets rejected, they can be scrutinize the remaining 10% in more detail. So, if you want to get-in, you have to "optimize grades and SAT" and "speaking French and Chinese, playing piano and painting abstract art" won't hurt either.
- sajithw 16y ago
  That's not entirely correct. You don't need near perfect SATs/grades, especially at a place like MIT. I know plenty of people (myself included) who do not fit that bill. And there is plenty of opportunity to discuss your projects. I mailed MIT a packet of all the interesting work I thought I had done and they even have an optional essay where you can talk about "something you built" in their application. I think they really care about those pet projects and they are the best differentiator they have.
  - jarekr 16y ago
    They have stats publicly available, so everyone can judge it themselves: http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/admissions_statistics/index.shtml http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/admissions_statist... If you look at percentage rates, the self-selection of the candidates might make it look like it is not so rigoristic. But take a look at the absolute numbers, for example for the "SAT Reasoning Test Scores (Math)": 1172 / (1172 + 269 + 108 + 2) =~ 0.76 So 76% of the students enrolled have scores in the best 750-800 range.
maurycy 16y ago
In other news, one data point is enough.
biot 16y ago
After that story, there's no source code? It would be interesting to see, at the very least.
thelastnode 16y ago
This is the problem that I had when I was applying to colleges: I used to ignore classes that bored me but were required and instead spent time that should have been spent on homework, etc. doing programming side projects and learning CS concepts. When application season rolled around, I had to compete with candidates who had a much shallow understanding of their area of study, but had a much stronger overall GPA, loads of random APs, etc. While I did mention my side projects and depth in my area of interest, I didn't think to submit code or the actual projects; I usually just mentioned it in the questions or essays (which I'm not certain anyone even reads). This lead to quite a few rejections. I'm at Georgia Tech now and doing well, because all my classes, more or less, are related to what I'm interested in. While I'm very happy here, I'm curious if I would be as happy if I wasn't accepted to Tech, and were instead studying in a place without such abundance of opportunity. I'm sure there are others in similar situations.
- sunkencity 16y ago
  Well, the long school years is a way to structurally hide mass unemployment now that we don't have child labour. If youngsters could provide meaningful work and pick up their skills on the way, things would look radically different. Especially in the turtle-pace that tuition normally take. Sure, learning takes time to settle, but why not do something meaningful while the learning settles?
- hn_is_dumb 16y ago
  Sure you're awesome, and everybody else sucks. Georgia Tech admits 61% of all applicants .... just saying.
  - thelastnode 16y ago
    No idea where this came from (or if it's a good idea to feed the trolls; "hn_is_dumb" - really?), but Tech does have the policy to accept most and then fail out those who don't belong there. Only 29% of incoming freshman graduate in 4 years. I'm glad Tech has this policy because there are lots of bright people here that did the same thing I did in high school and they do well here for similar reasons.
gaurav_v 16y ago
This is rare, but not unheard of; I can think of fiveish people off the top of my head that were admitted to MIT and Caltech without a high school diploma. All of the cases I know of are kids who just decided to leave high school without finishing their requirements, and went directly into one of the tech schools a year early. The blog post mentions that there 'was no place nearby to go to high school.' That's really the issue in play. All of the 'MIT a year early' people I know about made a case to admissions that they had exhausted all of the resources at their schools and the time for MIT was now. The tech schools don't discriminate against lack of opportunity. If you're perceived as not taking all of the opportunities presented to you, though, you're finished. The post mentions that he took some community college classes. This shows a desire to learn and an ability to take advantage of the resources available to him. If he hadn't gotten a high school diploma because he was just too cool to be bothered, I imagine that he would have had more of an uphill battle.
wyclif 16y ago
Glaring typos in the third paragraph, with repeated phrases and bold text. Good story, though. Upvoted.
Montagist 16y ago
I failed a number of classes because I'd stay up till about 4am every night for a few years straight programming random things for fun and fall asleep in school the next day. Only now that I'm trying to do some relatively complex stuff graphically in Flash do I wish I'dve paid more attention in math class.
orky56 16y ago
Just goes to show you can still be successful without an MBA, a bachelor's, or a diploma. So many successful people missed some part of standard education so I guess we all should since those are the ones we keep on celebrating. I can't tell if I'm being sarcastic or not...The idea is to avoid the typical route and focus on building and execution, where the real world is giving you a report card and not a school. If you're good enough, you'll get an honorary degree or be accepted without the standard credentials.
senthilnayagam 16y ago
sounds impressive but this is a exception, not the norm there are many areas where certification/practice needs prerequisite qualifications eg surgeon, attorney, airline pilot if the course is highly competitive/lucrative like say with IIT or AIIMS in india, expect litigations
alexanderswang 16y ago
MIT only enrolls geeks.
deleted 16y ago
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wooptoo 16y ago
Sounds like a modern Forrest Gump.
gulbrandr 16y ago
the title should have been: "Student accepted to MIT without high school degree thanks to his software code"
kragen 16y ago
Ed Fredkin has a somewhat more impressive story. He became an MIT professor without ever getting a degree — even an undergraduate degree. But by that point he'd invented a fundamental data structure (the radix tree or "trie"), worked at MIT for years on defense contracts, and made enough money off a high-tech startup to buy a small island in the Caribbean. Not metaphorically. He actually bought the island. He'd also been teaching at MIT for some time. He's at CMU now.
grammaton 16y ago
"Software code?" Really? This is the sort of thing that could have happened during a very small slice of highly unusual history. It certainly wouldn't happen these days.
sayemm 16y ago
MIT is a national treasure because of this: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm OpenCourseWare is absolutely amazing. I'm using it to study SICP and then will continue with K&R. I didn't go to MIT, but I'll always feel indebted to it because of these amazing resources.
shalmanese 16y ago
My friend Ryan Lackey also got into MIT without a high school diploma at 16 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Lackey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Lackey). He later dropped out to become the CTO of Sealand.
rexreed 16y ago
Once again, the title of the post and content overstate / misstate a point and belie the reality. Many high school students apply to schools like MIT without having a degree -- they get the degree when they actually graduate, by which time they have already been accepted or denied admission by schools like MIT. Speaking as an MIT graduate, and one that was accepted early as part of the early admission process, not once did they ask in the application or in person whether or not I already had a high school degree. Of course I didn't - I'd get one when I graduated. When I applied, I was still a Junior. and I applied early. All I needed were my SAT scores, a transcript (which the person in the article had as well), and evidence of excellence. I don't understand the point of articles like this that breathlessly trump one thing while the reality is something else. Colleges everywhere regularly accept people that have not yet completed high school. This is not just MIT. To say that MIT is somehow unique here misses the point. And yes, I know, because I went to MIT.
rdl 16y ago
I went to MIT without a high school diploma (and a few years early); I got a great score on the SAT standardized test, good recommendations from a couple of HS teachers, MIT summer camp grad student/professor instructors, and a hacker job I'd had (via the Internet). I don't think HS is actually a major factor in the MIT undergraduate admissions decision if you have a plausible reason for wanting to skip it.
daimyoyo 16y ago
While this story is awesome, it's really not that relevant today. During the Apple II days most programmers would have been self taught. Today, not so much.
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tokenadult 16y ago
The submitted blog post acclaims MIT as a "national treasure" because it admits applicants to its undergraduate degree programs who don't have a high school diploma (certificate of completion of secondary schooling). MIT is not alone in this policy. The Common Data Set Initiative http://www.commondataset.org/ http://www.commondataset.org/ surveys United States colleges and universities each year about their admission policies. Question C3 asks if a high school diploma is required for undergraduate admission. Harvard http://www.provost.harvard.edu/institutional_research/Provost_-_CDS2008_2009_Harvard_for_Web_Clean.pdf http://www.provost.harvard.edu/institutional_research/Provos... does not require a high school diploma for admission. Neither does Princeton. http://registrar.princeton.edu/university_enrollment_sta/common_cds2010.pdf http://registrar.princeton.edu/university_enrollment_sta/com... Nor does Yale require a high school diploma. http://www.yale.edu/oir/cds.pdf http://www.yale.edu/oir/cds.pdf MIT has long reported that it does not require a high school diploma for admission. http://web.mit.edu/ir/cds/2010/c.html http://web.mit.edu/ir/cds/2010/c.html http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/qanda/questions_and_answers/bens_seventh_semiannual_qa.shtml http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/qanda/questions_and_answ... There are other colleges that explicitly say in their Common Data Set filings that they do not require a high school diploma for admission. Moreover, homeschooling is widespread in around the world, http://learninfreedom.org/homeschool_growth.html http://learninfreedom.org/homeschool_growth.html and all of the most famous and most desired colleges and universities have admitted homeschoolers, http://learninfreedom.org/colleges_4_hmsc.html http://learninfreedom.org/colleges_4_hmsc.html who often have "home brew" transcripts (as my oldest son did when he applied for his undergraduate university studies last year). Lacking a high school diploma issued by a government-operated school is not a barrier to admission to any of the better colleges or universities in the United States, if the applicant is well prepared for higher education study. After edit: I'm amazed that this thread has not yet mentioned pg's essay "What You'll Wish You'd Known," http://paulgraham.com/hs.html http://paulgraham.com/hs.html his advice to high school students about how to use their time meaningfully. High school students who take this advice to heart can get into a good college with good financial support if they want to, or pursue some other challenging personal goal if they would rather do that.
- tomkarlo 16y ago
  I don't think the point is whether the schools require a high school diploma as a stated prerequisite; it's more whether they actually admit people with no diploma on the basis of other work.
mtindell 16y ago
When I was a sophomore at the 'Tute I became friendly with a frosh who was a little different. He was from Texas (as I am, but that is not germane) and was 24. He had pledged the co-ed frat next door to my dorm where I used to hang out a bit, and always to play pool at their Friday happy hours. His father was a senior executive at a well-known semiconductor manufacturer. He was certifiable on many levels, but a very interesting guy. He was working at Draper Labs within a month of his arrival on campus doing who-knows-what with some-unknown-level security clearance. He had applied to MIT from a Texas state penitentiary where he was serving a six-year sentence for robbing a series of pharmacies and related misdeeds. Once he finished there, he started a different sort of prison. ;) I recently submitted an application for the summer funding round as a sole founder. My one good friend who has been living JavaScript and CSS for the last few years is busy with his own company, but I am sure this is a good spot to meet potential partners. I call my idea StratoShare, and it involves a gateway for providing a uniform access API across users' data aggregations. The gateway would also manage a sharing graph for each user that would include those of their various aggregators, but would be independent of them. Share once with each other for everywhere, and manage it all in one view. If you have some Web app chops and are interested at all, please email jmichaeltindell@gmail.com and I'll send you a link to my application and video.
hoag 16y ago
Although arguably implied, there is nothing in this blog post that explicitly states that MIT is alone amongst institutions of higher learning in accepting a student without a HS diploma. Rather, it is simply demonstrating a particular example of just such an unusual occasion. I'm not sure why everyone is reading into it so much: it's just a "feel good" piece, really, illustrating how one student's practical skill set -- here, coding -- was sufficiently talented to warrant a second look by one of the country's (best) universities. And, being a private school, they were willing (and able) to peel back their own red tape and allow admission notwithstanding his otherwise disqualifying credentials. The point of the story is simply: here's a kid who was unqualified in the traditional, technical sense. But due to his obvious skill and intelligence in a particular field, a private school was willing to look past his technical disqualifications and, by its own prerogative, make an exception to its own rules. This is most certainly why Berkeley and other public schools were unwilling to make an exception: they have less flexibility. (As someone who attended UCLA, I can attest personally to the stringent red tape of California's public university system.) That the blog throws public and private schools into the discussion demonstrates a remarkably cavalier oversight that misses the point entirely with respect to why, precisely, MIT -- a private school -- is the school that happened to grant the student the exception.

525 points by hoag 16y ago

"he never got he never got a high school degree" This sentence tripped me up. I vividly remember some of the more boring classes where you end up staring at the clock, for some subjects I actually tried to put in the least effort possible to achieve 80%. I wish I had those years back to do follow something I really enjoyed doing.

unwind 16y ago
It tripped me up too, but for the (to me more obvious) reason that the "he never got" is repeated. Does that make sense to everyone but me? Or am I just being silly/obnoxious for complaining about (what I think is) an editing error in an article with an actual point? Or is meant like "he never understood that he never got a high school degree"? I'm not a native speaker of English, and the missing "that" in the linked-to article makes this interpretation feel unlikely to me. Confusing.

sliverstorm 16y ago

Honestly speaking, if he played around on an Apple II, this happened almost 30 years ago when the computer industry was still brand-new. Not to denigrate him, his achievements, or MIT, but the world is different now. It's an awesome anecdote, and I am a big fan of MIT, but consider this my preemptive counter-argument to the inevitable, "Here, see, more proof of why you should drop out of high school!" (though, after all's said and done, I do hope MIT is not too different from the MIT that accepted him back then)

sajithw 16y ago
This blog post makes it sound like he didn't fill out an application. However, I'm guessing he did and also sent in code as supplemental material (which is quite common). College admissions is a game. I currently go to MIT and it's definitely more meritocratic than many other institutions of similar "prestige" but it's not an exception. High school students today optimize their grades and SATs and after school activities. They speak French and Chinese, play piano and paint abstract art. They dance around and play hockey and act like they help homeless people. It's ultra-competitive. That said, the number of kids who do this sort of thing is waning. I think people realize that being extremely good or having insane dedication to one thing or "theme" is key. On the other hand this stereotype arose from an era where admissions committees were trying to create a class of well-rounded students. It still occurs to some degree. However, things are trending towards creating a well-rounded class instead (lots of highly specialized students).
michael_dorfman 16y ago
This. I, too, got into college without graduating high school, based on some software I wrote on an Apple II. It wasn't MIT, but that's kind of the point-- many schools are open to non-traditional students who impress them in some way. And back in those days, I imagine the bar was a lot lower in terms of what kind of code it took to impress (due to Moore's Law, as much as anything else...)
- rbanffy 16y ago
  Guess I should have submitted my Apple II code to MIT in the mid-80's... Too bad that, even if I did it now, they probably won't be able to read my Apple II floppies (I am afraid I won't be able to read them anymore - and I have a couple Apple IIs in my collection) :-/ How many of us wrote a window manager with 1K of 6502 code?
  - tluyben2 16y ago
    Z80, using HEX only. That was great. And no internet needed, just some magazines and BBS printouts.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      I confess I kind of cheated. I used William F. Luebbert's "What's Where in the Apple II" to find routines in ROM suitable to what I wanted to do. You can grab yours at http://apple2scans.net/apple-ii/whats-where-in-the-apple/ http://apple2scans.net/apple-ii/whats-where-in-the-apple/
  - Graham24 16y ago
    I did on the C64, prob more than 1K mind you. It allowed you to create a bordered window of any size and colour, write text directly to it and when it was closed, as if by magic, the text that was behind it was still there! I think you could have 8 such windows open at the same time. I was rather pleased with it at the time.
astrofinch 16y ago
In California, you can take the CHSPE http://chspe.net/ http://chspe.net/ to enroll in community college as young as 16. California has made it really easy to transfer from community colleges to UC schools. Transferring in to UC Berkeley's computer science program is very doable, especially if you apply through its College of Letters and Science (which you want to do anyway, since they are a lot more lenient than the College of Engineering in terms of letting you take time off and choosing the classes that interest you). Advantages of this route: * You can skip 2 years of high school and graduate with a BA while your high school friends are finishing their second years of college. * You save money living with your parents and going to community college for the first 2 years. * Your chances of getting in to a prestigious UC actually increase quite substantially. This is roughly what I did and I've been extremely happy about it. Feel free to contact me for details/individual advice: [my username] at gmail dot com
- notyourwork 16y ago
  Which leaves you with a BA instead of a BS and on a less technical level than the alternative route would take. This appears no different than CIS through Arts & Sciences versus CSE through Engineering at alma mater.
  - mattdeboard 16y ago
    Honestly though, will this really mean anything a year after graduating? Sincere question. I don't have a CS degree (or any bachelors degree) though I am pursuing one. The drumbeat seems to be that the most important lessons one learns with a BS in CS is the algorithms classes. Would a BA not deliver those classes to its students?
    - eliben 16y ago
      As a recruiting manager, I never really made any distinction between BA/BS/B.Sc/whatever. A degree from a good school with good grades is good enough, it isn't critical what the degree is called exactly. CS isn't Physics where you should have lots of years of study to actually be able to do something useful.
colanderman 16y ago
I'm only 25 yet I taught myself how to program on an Apple //e in elementary and middle schools. Furthermore, today's computing environments are arguably less conducive to autodidactism. When the Apple II booted it dropped you at a BASIC prompt.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  > today's computing environments are arguably less conducive to autodidactism I believe this fact cannot be overestimated.
  - zoul 16y ago
    When I was learning to program there was no Internet and there were preciously few technical books on the market. Often I had to resort to trial and error, where error could easily mean watching my machine rebooting, since there was little memory protection. Obviously I now see the world with different eyes, but it seems to me that today's computing world is much more suited to self-learning.
    - iqster 16y ago
      You're right in that there are more learning resources - ebooks and lectures galore! However, the complexity of software systems has increased quite a bit too. This complexity, and the ensuing layers of abstraction are enemies to learning IMHO. Here's a personal anecdote ... I remember having a vague understanding of MFC for a number of years, until one day I came across a manual of MFC 1.0. For whatever reason, I went through the old book and came out with a strong understanding of main class structure and motivation behind the framework. I was a bit surprised that the tomes on the subject (and I had many of the latest at that time) were thick but lack some of the essential ideas.
      - kenjackson 16y ago
        But web development, while very abstract, is very simple. Sure there are tons of frameworks, but you can still do great stuff with just css/html/jquery/server. And the amount of stuff on the web makes it that much easier.
nupark 16y ago
Figuring out a way around the standardized admissions process is the admissions process for nonstandard applicants. This is no different than anything else in life, from job applications to pitching a client, and the world hasn't changed as much as you seem to imply.
- DavidChouinard 16y ago
  > Figuring out a way around the standardized admissions process is the admissions process. So true.
araneae 16y ago
Agreed. My dad didn't have a high school degree- or even a GED- and he got a full scholarship to UMass Amherst. It wasn't that unusual.
sidek 16y ago
Actually, someone I know got into MIT after Grade 11 due to mathematics competition achievements/math work in general. That happened this year.
tomlin 16y ago
"Here, see, more proof of why you should drop out of high school!" I actually love these stories for a different reason. If your interests are specific, you find most classes boring, repetitive, unhelpful and you have passion for your interests - the school system fails you big time. It pains me to see our society viscerally and religiously touting high school education when it doesn't satisfy a high minority of minds. If we can add some light to that and possibly change the system for the better, less of us would be dropping out and actually touting high school as useful because it actually would be.
- timtadh 16y ago
  Not to belittle those whom the school system is the failing, but he wasn't in the school system. The blog post notes there was no school close enough for him to go to. It could be since the area was rural the majority of the kids engaged in agriculture/worked after 8th grade with a minority leaving to attend school in a nearby town. Perhaps you could argue the school system did fail him because there wasn't one close by. However, I think your comment was meant in the spirit of schools that fail there students like so many do in Cleveland (where I live).
sanj 16y ago
Not quite 30, closer to 18. Tom appears to have been in the class of 97. I played around on an Apple ][ and I was class of '94. I suspect Tom and I just started in our early teens.
Anechoic 16y ago
>Honestly speaking, if he played around on an Apple II, this happened almost 30 years ago The only Thomas Pinckney in the Alumni directory has a graduation year of 1996/1997 (two degrees, so it fits with the linked story).
cdixon 16y ago
the guy built the exokernal project at MIT. you work with the tools you have. Apple 2 at the time and later radically new OSs.

rdouble 16y ago

Philip Greenspun also entered MIT after dropping out of high school.

mnazim 16y ago
I honestly believe our education systems(those that I know about) most of the time end up keeping some of the best people behind. The idea of degrees and diplomas where everything is depends on scores achieved in a set of examination is utterly counter productive in my opinion. I hate it when I see people worrying about grades without understanding what those grades actually mean.
- hn_is_dumb 16y ago
  The vast majority of the "best people" cruise through our education systems. The few who truly don't fit the mold usually end up making it if they are genuinely exemplary. Low caliber people then hide behind these few outliers to try to rationalize their own lack of ability and academic mediocrity. "I suck at everything but I know I'm smart cuz <famous_person> also didn't like school." Everybody wants a medal. And when they don't get one, they blame everything but themselves.
iqster 16y ago
I did not realize that! I was just reading some of his old blog posts this morning. He's pretty impressive. http://philip.greenspun.com/school/tuition-free-mit.html http://philip.greenspun.com/school/tuition-free-mit.html http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/octopus.html http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/octopus.html

user24 16y ago

It's not so unusual, I was accepted into my Computer Science MSc (at Oxford) without a CS background - I did have a first class BA, but it was a joint honours in IT and Philosophy from a more-or-less unknown university (Lampeter). Anyone who knows CS will know that IT is nothing like CS. I didn't have any A-Levels either. Masters degrees are a lot more forgiving, and I had some experience in software engineering. (edit: this was year of 2009, and yes, I passed ;0) )

bhickey 16y ago
It's rare, but not unheard of even outside of CS. A friend of mine is finishing up his degree at Brown University having never graduated from high school. Instead he joined up and did three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as a pararescueman. The university has a program in place for students who experience an interruption (family, work, service, etc.) in their education. http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Dean_of_the_College/advising/rue.php http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Dean_of_the_College/advi...
arethuza 16y ago
I don't know if this applies to the course you did but there used to be a lot of "conversion course" MSc courses in CS related areas in the UK. These were very much targeted at people who did not have a background in CS.
- user24 16y ago
  yeah I think those courses do still exist, mine was a straight-up MSc though.

amnigos 16y ago

This should be an eye opener for all those bookish/only SAT score people.

jister 16y ago

While this is fascinating let's not forget that other people are NOT like Tom. Education is important and we shouldn't dismiss it if we have an opportunity to take it.

bfe 16y ago

Someone I know well was recruited on full scholarship to Cornell as a math student in 2007, even though he was a high school dropout.

Alex3917 16y ago
There is some ridiculous story about how the guy who founded Burger King got into Cornell. Apparently the head of the mycology department had written some article 20 years earlier in a trade journal saying that anyone who did X, Y, and Z would get an automatic in to the university, and the guy came along and did these things even though he was otherwise completely unqualified.

arihant 16y ago

To all the comments here - I don't think Chris is making a point against schooling. He's sort of implicitly making a point against resume padding. Resume padding is not a healthy thing and such examples could enlighten a lot of high school students.

bfe 16y ago
I think another way of looking at this is in parallel with Ben Horowitz's dictum, in the context of hiring, to look for strength rather than lack of weakness. I think in school admissions or hiring, there's a trade-off in the end of trying to find the best people in terms of the most impressive lack of weakness in any area versus the most impressive strength in at least one area. The more bureaucratic the process becomes, the more it tends to favor screening for lack of weakness. There's a corresponding tension on the candidate side in how to prioritize the record of accomplishment one seeks to develop to prepare for a desired school admission or job, in how much effort to devote to shoring up any potential weaknesses versus how much effort to devote to pursuing capabilities and accomplishments centered on one's core competency. Sometimes that choice might take the form of whether to procrastinate less consequential pursuits to focus all one's effort on the most important thing one knows of to work on at that time, and sometimes that neglect of other pursuits can make a difference not just in degree but in kind, like pg talks about in "Good and Bad Procrastination". The danger is that all college admissions processes are becoming homogenized and over-bureaucratized to the point of excessively screening for lack of weakness, to the point of never fairly considering a candidate's record of profound intellectual accomplishment because all the right boxes on their record aren't checked off, and that students are calibrating their intellectual pursuits accordingly. The glory of MIT in this example is that it avoided that over-bureaucracy of the process at least in this instance. Obviously you can say well, any really gifted student should devote all necessary effort to a well-rounded education and SAT prep and extra-curricular activities as well as develop clear accomplishments in a core interest, and should be able to do well at it all. There's always a trade-off at some point though; and I think many of the greatest intellectual accomplishments have come from people who didn't consistently devote large chunks of their schedule to a diverse portfolio of widely varying subjects and activities.

jarekr 16y ago

Speaking as someone who applied for MIT a few years ago, something like this is no longer possible and the "rat race" description used for comparision is now in fact valid for MIT as well. Nowhere in the recrutation process you have much possiblity to show your "software code" - everything is very formalized and you have to submit your grades, essays on specified topics, pass the SATs and go through a interview (but the interviewer doesn't have to know anything about the discipline you want to study). Yes, you can describe your most interesting projects as part of your application, but if you read the admission blogs and other MIT materials, it is quite clearly implied that unless you have near-perfect grades and/or near-perfect SAT scores, they won't even look at the project descriptions, essays etc. Also there is no way of knowing why you were accepted or rejected, because the whole proccess is 100% opaque to the outside world. I still think the MIT is awesome and the admission process probably has to look more or less like it looks like because of the volume of applications they have to go through. But the post and some of the comments seem to leave the impression that the MIT addmission comitee will look at every person as a "unique snowflake" to find the really outstanding candidates. In reality, the admission process has to be quite mechanical so that they can at all manage it and only after the initial 90% of the applications gets rejected, they can be scrutinize the remaining 10% in more detail. So, if you want to get-in, you have to "optimize grades and SAT" and "speaking French and Chinese, playing piano and painting abstract art" won't hurt either.

sajithw 16y ago
That's not entirely correct. You don't need near perfect SATs/grades, especially at a place like MIT. I know plenty of people (myself included) who do not fit that bill. And there is plenty of opportunity to discuss your projects. I mailed MIT a packet of all the interesting work I thought I had done and they even have an optional essay where you can talk about "something you built" in their application. I think they really care about those pet projects and they are the best differentiator they have.
- jarekr 16y ago
  They have stats publicly available, so everyone can judge it themselves: http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/admissions_statistics/index.shtml http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/admissions_statist... If you look at percentage rates, the self-selection of the candidates might make it look like it is not so rigoristic. But take a look at the absolute numbers, for example for the "SAT Reasoning Test Scores (Math)": 1172 / (1172 + 269 + 108 + 2) =~ 0.76 So 76% of the students enrolled have scores in the best 750-800 range.

maurycy 16y ago

In other news, one data point is enough.

biot 16y ago

After that story, there's no source code? It would be interesting to see, at the very least.

thelastnode 16y ago

This is the problem that I had when I was applying to colleges: I used to ignore classes that bored me but were required and instead spent time that should have been spent on homework, etc. doing programming side projects and learning CS concepts. When application season rolled around, I had to compete with candidates who had a much shallow understanding of their area of study, but had a much stronger overall GPA, loads of random APs, etc. While I did mention my side projects and depth in my area of interest, I didn't think to submit code or the actual projects; I usually just mentioned it in the questions or essays (which I'm not certain anyone even reads). This lead to quite a few rejections. I'm at Georgia Tech now and doing well, because all my classes, more or less, are related to what I'm interested in. While I'm very happy here, I'm curious if I would be as happy if I wasn't accepted to Tech, and were instead studying in a place without such abundance of opportunity. I'm sure there are others in similar situations.

sunkencity 16y ago
Well, the long school years is a way to structurally hide mass unemployment now that we don't have child labour. If youngsters could provide meaningful work and pick up their skills on the way, things would look radically different. Especially in the turtle-pace that tuition normally take. Sure, learning takes time to settle, but why not do something meaningful while the learning settles?
hn_is_dumb 16y ago
Sure you're awesome, and everybody else sucks. Georgia Tech admits 61% of all applicants .... just saying.
- thelastnode 16y ago
  No idea where this came from (or if it's a good idea to feed the trolls; "hn_is_dumb" - really?), but Tech does have the policy to accept most and then fail out those who don't belong there. Only 29% of incoming freshman graduate in 4 years. I'm glad Tech has this policy because there are lots of bright people here that did the same thing I did in high school and they do well here for similar reasons.

gaurav_v 16y ago

This is rare, but not unheard of; I can think of fiveish people off the top of my head that were admitted to MIT and Caltech without a high school diploma. All of the cases I know of are kids who just decided to leave high school without finishing their requirements, and went directly into one of the tech schools a year early. The blog post mentions that there 'was no place nearby to go to high school.' That's really the issue in play. All of the 'MIT a year early' people I know about made a case to admissions that they had exhausted all of the resources at their schools and the time for MIT was now. The tech schools don't discriminate against lack of opportunity. If you're perceived as not taking all of the opportunities presented to you, though, you're finished. The post mentions that he took some community college classes. This shows a desire to learn and an ability to take advantage of the resources available to him. If he hadn't gotten a high school diploma because he was just too cool to be bothered, I imagine that he would have had more of an uphill battle.

wyclif 16y ago

Glaring typos in the third paragraph, with repeated phrases and bold text. Good story, though. Upvoted.

Montagist 16y ago

I failed a number of classes because I'd stay up till about 4am every night for a few years straight programming random things for fun and fall asleep in school the next day. Only now that I'm trying to do some relatively complex stuff graphically in Flash do I wish I'dve paid more attention in math class.

orky56 16y ago

Just goes to show you can still be successful without an MBA, a bachelor's, or a diploma. So many successful people missed some part of standard education so I guess we all should since those are the ones we keep on celebrating. I can't tell if I'm being sarcastic or not...The idea is to avoid the typical route and focus on building and execution, where the real world is giving you a report card and not a school. If you're good enough, you'll get an honorary degree or be accepted without the standard credentials.

senthilnayagam 16y ago

sounds impressive but this is a exception, not the norm there are many areas where certification/practice needs prerequisite qualifications eg surgeon, attorney, airline pilot if the course is highly competitive/lucrative like say with IIT or AIIMS in india, expect litigations

alexanderswang 16y ago

MIT only enrolls geeks.

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wooptoo 16y ago

Sounds like a modern Forrest Gump.

gulbrandr 16y ago

the title should have been: "Student accepted to MIT without high school degree thanks to his software code"

kragen 16y ago

Ed Fredkin has a somewhat more impressive story. He became an MIT professor without ever getting a degree — even an undergraduate degree. But by that point he'd invented a fundamental data structure (the radix tree or "trie"), worked at MIT for years on defense contracts, and made enough money off a high-tech startup to buy a small island in the Caribbean. Not metaphorically. He actually bought the island. He'd also been teaching at MIT for some time. He's at CMU now.

grammaton 16y ago

"Software code?" Really? This is the sort of thing that could have happened during a very small slice of highly unusual history. It certainly wouldn't happen these days.

sayemm 16y ago

MIT is a national treasure because of this: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm OpenCourseWare is absolutely amazing. I'm using it to study SICP and then will continue with K&R. I didn't go to MIT, but I'll always feel indebted to it because of these amazing resources.

shalmanese 16y ago

My friend Ryan Lackey also got into MIT without a high school diploma at 16 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Lackey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Lackey). He later dropped out to become the CTO of Sealand.

rexreed 16y ago

Once again, the title of the post and content overstate / misstate a point and belie the reality. Many high school students apply to schools like MIT without having a degree -- they get the degree when they actually graduate, by which time they have already been accepted or denied admission by schools like MIT. Speaking as an MIT graduate, and one that was accepted early as part of the early admission process, not once did they ask in the application or in person whether or not I already had a high school degree. Of course I didn't - I'd get one when I graduated. When I applied, I was still a Junior. and I applied early. All I needed were my SAT scores, a transcript (which the person in the article had as well), and evidence of excellence. I don't understand the point of articles like this that breathlessly trump one thing while the reality is something else. Colleges everywhere regularly accept people that have not yet completed high school. This is not just MIT. To say that MIT is somehow unique here misses the point. And yes, I know, because I went to MIT.

rdl 16y ago

I went to MIT without a high school diploma (and a few years early); I got a great score on the SAT standardized test, good recommendations from a couple of HS teachers, MIT summer camp grad student/professor instructors, and a hacker job I'd had (via the Internet). I don't think HS is actually a major factor in the MIT undergraduate admissions decision if you have a plausible reason for wanting to skip it.

daimyoyo 16y ago

While this story is awesome, it's really not that relevant today. During the Apple II days most programmers would have been self taught. Today, not so much.

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tokenadult 16y ago

The submitted blog post acclaims MIT as a "national treasure" because it admits applicants to its undergraduate degree programs who don't have a high school diploma (certificate of completion of secondary schooling). MIT is not alone in this policy. The Common Data Set Initiative http://www.commondataset.org/ http://www.commondataset.org/ surveys United States colleges and universities each year about their admission policies. Question C3 asks if a high school diploma is required for undergraduate admission. Harvard http://www.provost.harvard.edu/institutional_research/Provost_-_CDS2008_2009_Harvard_for_Web_Clean.pdf http://www.provost.harvard.edu/institutional_research/Provos... does not require a high school diploma for admission. Neither does Princeton. http://registrar.princeton.edu/university_enrollment_sta/common_cds2010.pdf http://registrar.princeton.edu/university_enrollment_sta/com... Nor does Yale require a high school diploma. http://www.yale.edu/oir/cds.pdf http://www.yale.edu/oir/cds.pdf MIT has long reported that it does not require a high school diploma for admission. http://web.mit.edu/ir/cds/2010/c.html http://web.mit.edu/ir/cds/2010/c.html http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/qanda/questions_and_answers/bens_seventh_semiannual_qa.shtml http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/qanda/questions_and_answ... There are other colleges that explicitly say in their Common Data Set filings that they do not require a high school diploma for admission. Moreover, homeschooling is widespread in around the world, http://learninfreedom.org/homeschool_growth.html http://learninfreedom.org/homeschool_growth.html and all of the most famous and most desired colleges and universities have admitted homeschoolers, http://learninfreedom.org/colleges_4_hmsc.html http://learninfreedom.org/colleges_4_hmsc.html who often have "home brew" transcripts (as my oldest son did when he applied for his undergraduate university studies last year). Lacking a high school diploma issued by a government-operated school is not a barrier to admission to any of the better colleges or universities in the United States, if the applicant is well prepared for higher education study. After edit: I'm amazed that this thread has not yet mentioned pg's essay "What You'll Wish You'd Known," http://paulgraham.com/hs.html http://paulgraham.com/hs.html his advice to high school students about how to use their time meaningfully. High school students who take this advice to heart can get into a good college with good financial support if they want to, or pursue some other challenging personal goal if they would rather do that.

tomkarlo 16y ago
I don't think the point is whether the schools require a high school diploma as a stated prerequisite; it's more whether they actually admit people with no diploma on the basis of other work.

mtindell 16y ago

When I was a sophomore at the 'Tute I became friendly with a frosh who was a little different. He was from Texas (as I am, but that is not germane) and was 24. He had pledged the co-ed frat next door to my dorm where I used to hang out a bit, and always to play pool at their Friday happy hours. His father was a senior executive at a well-known semiconductor manufacturer. He was certifiable on many levels, but a very interesting guy. He was working at Draper Labs within a month of his arrival on campus doing who-knows-what with some-unknown-level security clearance. He had applied to MIT from a Texas state penitentiary where he was serving a six-year sentence for robbing a series of pharmacies and related misdeeds. Once he finished there, he started a different sort of prison. ;) I recently submitted an application for the summer funding round as a sole founder. My one good friend who has been living JavaScript and CSS for the last few years is busy with his own company, but I am sure this is a good spot to meet potential partners. I call my idea StratoShare, and it involves a gateway for providing a uniform access API across users' data aggregations. The gateway would also manage a sharing graph for each user that would include those of their various aggregators, but would be independent of them. Share once with each other for everywhere, and manage it all in one view. If you have some Web app chops and are interested at all, please email jmichaeltindell@gmail.com and I'll send you a link to my application and video.

hoag 16y ago

Although arguably implied, there is nothing in this blog post that explicitly states that MIT is alone amongst institutions of higher learning in accepting a student without a HS diploma. Rather, it is simply demonstrating a particular example of just such an unusual occasion. I'm not sure why everyone is reading into it so much: it's just a "feel good" piece, really, illustrating how one student's practical skill set -- here, coding -- was sufficiently talented to warrant a second look by one of the country's (best) universities. And, being a private school, they were willing (and able) to peel back their own red tape and allow admission notwithstanding his otherwise disqualifying credentials. The point of the story is simply: here's a kid who was unqualified in the traditional, technical sense. But due to his obvious skill and intelligence in a particular field, a private school was willing to look past his technical disqualifications and, by its own prerogative, make an exception to its own rules. This is most certainly why Berkeley and other public schools were unwilling to make an exception: they have less flexibility. (As someone who attended UCLA, I can attest personally to the stringent red tape of California's public university system.) That the blog throws public and private schools into the discussion demonstrates a remarkably cavalier oversight that misses the point entirely with respect to why, precisely, MIT -- a private school -- is the school that happened to grant the student the exception.