I got into MIT at 16 and turned 17 during my freshman year. I can't say I ever suffered socially as a result; I'm a very social person and had a large group of

I got into MIT at 16 and turned 17 during my freshman year. I can't say I ever suffered socially as a result; I'm a very social person and had a large group of friends at school. As far as the strategy, if you can call it that: I wasn't getting much out of high school and realized I could finish all my required classes in 3 years, so I did. By far my most time consuming extracurricular activity was studying the violin; until I entered MIT, I'd been primarily a musician, and I certainly wasn't forced into science or engineering. I'd taught myself to program and decided that EE/CS was an interesting career path, so I applied to MIT. (Now I'm an integrated circuit designer.)