5 ms·

Had a friend in grad school who was 15 when he entered... had his doctorate by 21.

by adamc 4y ago

hgsgm 4y ago
How many years did he spend in college? Seems like he rushed for no reason and then slowed down.
- lumost 4y ago
  Utility of being fast drops off in grad school. You can be a course master - but then you have to work. Working also means convincing others who are often going to look at a 15 year old skeptically.
- vkou 4y ago
  Rushing through the middle-to-high-school curriculum is easy. Very, very little novel information actually gets taught over the ~200 hours that make up a school course. Rushing through undergrad is possible if you do nothing but grind homework and study and read. Grad school requires you to spend hours and hours in a lab, ass-in-seat, doing research. You're no longer competing with beer pong champions. Unless you're an absolute genius at finding the right direction to solving a novel problem, you're not going to get dramatically better results than your peers. And even if you are, you might be unlucky, and end up wasting a lot of time going down the wrong rabbit-hole.
  - darth_avocado 4y ago
    Grad and post doc students are also often at the mercy of Professors and other academics who significantly slow you down even if you are an absolute genius. My professor guided me away from my core interests multiple times towards their interests by not providing the right mentorship even though they could. Then finally I found my calling and finished my thesis, I had to spend months rewriting it again and again even if my findings and the science behind it didn't change. Having to write unnecessarily dense paragraphs was apparently required. (I am not a genius by any means, just sharing what happens in academia)
  - nradov 4y ago
    You're describing grad school in the sciences for doctoral candidates. For other types of graduate education such as master's degree programs in public policy, international relations, or business administration it's totally possible to rush through if you can handle the load and can make the required course schedules line up.
- adamc 4y ago
  I think he started college at 12 or maybe 13.
- adamc 4y ago
  It was in physics. Maybe that played a part.

Had a friend in grad school who was 15 when he entered... had his doctorate by 21.

by adamc 4y ago

Had a friend in grad school who was 15 when he entered... had his doctorate by 21.

hgsgm 4y ago

How many years did he spend in college? Seems like he rushed for no reason and then slowed down.

lumost 4y ago
Utility of being fast drops off in grad school. You can be a course master - but then you have to work. Working also means convincing others who are often going to look at a 15 year old skeptically.
vkou 4y ago
Rushing through the middle-to-high-school curriculum is easy. Very, very little novel information actually gets taught over the ~200 hours that make up a school course. Rushing through undergrad is possible if you do nothing but grind homework and study and read. Grad school requires you to spend hours and hours in a lab, ass-in-seat, doing research. You're no longer competing with beer pong champions. Unless you're an absolute genius at finding the right direction to solving a novel problem, you're not going to get dramatically better results than your peers. And even if you are, you might be unlucky, and end up wasting a lot of time going down the wrong rabbit-hole.
- darth_avocado 4y ago
  Grad and post doc students are also often at the mercy of Professors and other academics who significantly slow you down even if you are an absolute genius. My professor guided me away from my core interests multiple times towards their interests by not providing the right mentorship even though they could. Then finally I found my calling and finished my thesis, I had to spend months rewriting it again and again even if my findings and the science behind it didn't change. Having to write unnecessarily dense paragraphs was apparently required. (I am not a genius by any means, just sharing what happens in academia)
- nradov 4y ago
  You're describing grad school in the sciences for doctoral candidates. For other types of graduate education such as master's degree programs in public policy, international relations, or business administration it's totally possible to rush through if you can handle the load and can make the required course schedules line up.
adamc 4y ago
I think he started college at 12 or maybe 13.
adamc 4y ago
It was in physics. Maybe that played a part.