The description of the Director's Summer Program (DSP) for recruiting math undergrad interns sounds almost reminiscent of Ender's Game. These were some brilliant kids who achieved a lot in one summer.
> The students had to learn decades of classified cryptologic mathematics in two weeks, as well as a myriad of details about the four problems presented to them. During these two weeks, some learned to program for the first time. All were proficient programmers by the end of the summer.
> Incredibly, before they met us, two of our DSP students, juniors, had not been planning to go on to graduate school following their senior year. These two were performing exceptionally well in their current, demaning academic programs and, ironically, made the most direct contributions to the most significant results of the workshop. One went home from the DSP with a surge of confidence, applied to all the top graduate schools and is now in a Ph.D. program on a fellowship. The other wished to become an NSA employee, but we talked her out of joining us right away. She took all pure mathematics courses her senior year and is now in graduate school in a Ph.D. program on a fellowship.
It'd be fascinating to know what they're working on now.
(Vol. XX, No. 1 - 1st Issue 1994, #126 on the list)
> It'd be fascinating to know what they're working on now.
They're almost certainly not working with technology that's "ahead by 10 years", as their recruiters like to advertise: Their hardware is basically standard stuff shipped by Sun (... I guess that's Oracle now), running mostly Java.
> The students had to learn decades of classified cryptologic mathematics in two weeks, as well as a myriad of details about the four problems presented to them. During these two weeks, some learned to program for the first time. All were proficient programmers by the end of the summer.
> Incredibly, before they met us, two of our DSP students, juniors, had not been planning to go on to graduate school following their senior year. These two were performing exceptionally well in their current, demaning academic programs and, ironically, made the most direct contributions to the most significant results of the workshop. One went home from the DSP with a surge of confidence, applied to all the top graduate schools and is now in a Ph.D. program on a fellowship. The other wished to become an NSA employee, but we talked her out of joining us right away. She took all pure mathematics courses her senior year and is now in graduate school in a Ph.D. program on a fellowship.
It'd be fascinating to know what they're working on now.
(Vol. XX, No. 1 - 1st Issue 1994, #126 on the list)