
MIT is a national treasure - hoag
http://cdixon.posterous.com/mit-is-a-national-treasure
======
sliverstorm
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)

~~~
colanderman
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.

~~~
agentultra
I don't think I can agree.

I'm 29 and learned BASIC on an Apple II. While remembering what it was like
makes me nostalgic for simpler times, I don't kid myself. It sucked.

I had to read out of scrappy library copies of Byte and Compute magazine.
There were hours of trial and error. And worst of all, it all went away when
you turned off the machine unless you had one of those notoriously unreliable
tape machines.

Contrast that to my first experiences with Linux nearly a decade later. I had
man pages, Usenet, IRC, and the web; better hardware, an operating system,
developer tools, and free compilers! I learned about Perl and dynamic
languages (I was into C at the time). I slowly started learning about how
operating systems worked. It was a far more conducive environment for
learning.

All of this information was right there on the computer. No more trudging down
to the library or throwing away my money on thick technical manuals and trial-
version compilers.

I'd say modern FOSS computing environments are the most conducive to learning.
The Apple II was a toy compared to what we have now.

~~~
apgwoz
And, when you booted into GNU/Linux, you also had a web browser, chat
programs, games, etc. The possibilities for distractions are numerous.
Contrast that to a BASIC prompt. If you go to your computer to learn BASIC, as
long as you are sitting in front of the computer and actively staring at it,
you're either going to:

    
    
        a) get bored as hell by doing nothing 
        b) type some stuff in from your magazine and execute 
            (thereby learning "something" along the way because of
            typos, pattern recognition, etc. (of course you'll /then/ get
            distracted, but you had to work a bit)
        c) write a program from scratch by exploration, or need.

~~~
reedlaw
If anyone wants to try something that approximates a computer that boots into
a BASIC prompt, try AVR programming or Arduino. It's either C or assembler and
you've got to use mainly reference manuals. Arduino has more resources and
thus may be more prone to distraction.

~~~
enduser
Either of these require programming on a computer with web-browser, games,
chat, etc. Programming embedded hardware does not solve the problem of working
in a distracting environment. Self-discipline, determination, and perhaps
other inner qualities are necessary and always have been.

------
jarekr
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.

~~~
cypherpunks
Bullshit.

They have the application process. You can ignore it. I did. I had shit grades
in high school (not shit-by-MIT-standards, but actual shit). I took no time to
do homework, and instead spent time reading math books and programming. By the
time I applied, I had done research at a reputable university laboratory
(although I did not get to the point of publishing), and had a good
recommendation from a well-known professor there. I had also taken several
advanced math classes at a state school.

I sent MIT a custom admission packet. I filled out their paperwork for
biographical information, but mostly ignored it.

MIT rejected me early admission. I called to ask why. They told me that they
liked my packet, but given my grades, they were concerned about my maturity
and my ability to work hard. I got an extra recommendation from a professor
teaching the math class I was taking, whom I had asked to explicitly let them
know that I was mature and a hardworker. At that point, MIT took me.

I didn't even bother applying to Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, and the like,
since I knew I had no chance.

Optimizing for grades is a bad and stupid strategy. If you're late in the game
(high school), it's the only strategy with a chance of success. If you're
circa elementary school, the best strategy is to ignore school. The time with
no homework will let you learn math and science (which you can do much more
quickly than school will teach you), and to have real accomplishments by the
time you apply.

Real accomplishments ALWAYS trump grades, for anything, be it university
admissions, jobs, or YCombinator. Grades are a proxy to see whether you are
smart and can do useful things. Accomplishments are a direct measure.

~~~
narkee
> I took no time to do homework, and instead spent time reading math books and
> programming

vs.

>I got an extra recommendation from a professor teaching the math class I was
taking, whom I had asked to explicitly let them know that I was mature and a
hardworker...

These statements are irreconcilable. A hard worker does work that he/she is
assigned, and does not make pre-mature value judgements on the worthiness of
said work. Being smart does not mean you're a hard worker. That was a pretty
irresponsible recommendation by the professor, considering you didn't exhibit
the qualities you claimed to.

~~~
tkahn6
> A hard worker does work that he/she is assigned

Maybe. But a smart worker evaluates what's important and what's not. Formal
education and learning are sometimes completely orthogonal to each other. You
might be thinking "well, how do you know what's important?" and the answer is
that it's a gamble and decisions like those are not for everyone. There is no
virtue in simply doing what you're told and being passive in your own
education.

~~~
narkee
The OP claimed that he procured a reference that attested to his "hard-
workingness". It's perfectly ok to be a smart worker, and I don't disagree
with your point. My point of contention is with the abuse of the reference
system - what value does the reference system have if you simply ask for (and
receive) character attributes you do not possess?

So basically he was admitted on traditional merit, by misleading application
reviewers.

~~~
tkahn6
Yeah I guess it depends how you define "hard work". Certainly spending hours
reading math books and programming is some sort of work.

------
kragen
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.

------
light3
"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
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.

------
thelastnode
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.

~~~
mturmon
If you have talent, and work hard to cultivate it, then you can take advantage
of the opportunities that are around you. Doesn't matter if you're at GA Tech
or MIT, there are always more good opportunities than good people.

~~~
thelastnode
I definitely agree; it's just a matter of finding the right people.

Anecdote: attending some of the tech talks that companies give at Tech, there
is always a gradient of people, from the people that are there for free food
to the people that are there to ask questions and get something out of it.
These tech talks are thinly veiled recruiting events, and the latter set of
people are always approached afterwards for interviews or networking purposes.

------
gaurav_v
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.

------
jister
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.

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

~~~
mnazim
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
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.

------
user24
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) )

~~~
arethuza
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
yeah I think those courses do still exist, mine was a straight-up MSc though.

------
tokenadult
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/>

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/Provos...](http://www.provost.harvard.edu/institutional_research/Provost_-
_CDS2008_2009_Harvard_for_Web_Clean.pdf)

does not require a high school diploma for admission.

Neither does Princeton.

[http://registrar.princeton.edu/university_enrollment_sta/com...](http://registrar.princeton.edu/university_enrollment_sta/common_cds2010.pdf)

Nor does Yale require a high school diploma.

<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://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/qanda/questions_and_answ...](http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/qanda/questions_and_answers/bens_seventh_semiannual_qa.shtml)

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>

and all of the most famous and most desired colleges and universities have
admitted homeschoolers,

<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>

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
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.

~~~
rexreed
Many / most schools admit people with no diploma on the basis of their work.
This is why many students apply as Juniors in high school and how early
admission works. If universities required a high school diploma as a
qualification, students wouldn't be able to apply until they actually
completed high school. There are many cases of people entering college as
early as 13 years old, and this is not limited to MIT.

~~~
aikinai
Early admission has nothing to do with having a diploma. All undergraduate and
graduate programs let you apply before you have finished the previous level
because the application and acceptance process takes more than the time
between schools.

In cases where diplomas are required, the acceptance letter will always
contain language stating that they will retract your acceptance if your grades
drop an unacceptable amount or you don't finish the degree you're working on.
Then most schools require you to submit another set of transcripts, proof of
graduation, etc. before you officially enroll.

------
sayemm
MIT is a national treasure because of this: <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.

------
hoag
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.

------
rexreed
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.

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

------
arihant
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
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.

------
mtindell
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.

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

------
orky56
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.

------
rdl
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.

------
bfe
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
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.

------
maurycy
In other news, one data point is enough.

------
senthilnayagam
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

------
daimyoyo
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.

------
grammaton
"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.

------
gulbrandr
the title should have been: "Student accepted to MIT without high school
degree _thanks to_ his software code"

------
alexanderswang
MIT only enrolls geeks.

------
wooptoo
Sounds like a modern Forrest Gump.

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

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

