MIT is a national treasure

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 <i>is</i> different now.<p>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!"<p>(though, after all's said and done, I do hope MIT is not <i>too</i> different from the MIT that accepted him back then)

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.<p>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.<p>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.

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.<p>He's at CMU now.

"he never got he never got a high school degree"<p>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.

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.<p>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.<p>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 <i>wasn't</i> accepted to Tech, and were instead studying in a place without such abundance of opportunity. I'm sure there are others in similar situations.

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.<p>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.

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.

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

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).<p>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.<p>(edit: this was year of 2009, and yes, I passed ;0) )

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<p><a href="http://www.commondataset.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.commondataset.org/</a><p>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.<p>Harvard<p><a href="http://www.provost.harvard.edu/institutional_research/Provost_-_CDS2008_2009_Harvard_for_Web_Clean.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.provost.harvard.edu/institutional_research/Provos...</a><p>does not require a high school diploma for admission.<p>Neither does Princeton.<p><a href="http://registrar.princeton.edu/university_enrollment_sta/common_cds2010.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://registrar.princeton.edu/university_enrollment_sta/com...</a><p>Nor does Yale require a high school diploma.<p><a href="http://www.yale.edu/oir/cds.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.yale.edu/oir/cds.pdf</a><p>MIT has long reported that it does not require a high school diploma for admission.<p><a href="http://web.mit.edu/ir/cds/2010/c.html" rel="nofollow">http://web.mit.edu/ir/cds/2010/c.html</a><p><a href="http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/qanda/questions_and_answers/bens_seventh_semiannual_qa.shtml" rel="nofollow">http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/qanda/questions_and_answ...</a><p>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,<p><a href="http://learninfreedom.org/homeschool_growth.html" rel="nofollow">http://learninfreedom.org/homeschool_growth.html</a><p>and all of the most famous and most desired colleges and universities have admitted homeschoolers,<p><a href="http://learninfreedom.org/colleges_4_hmsc.html" rel="nofollow">http://learninfreedom.org/colleges_4_hmsc.html</a><p>who often have "home brew" transcripts (as my oldest son did when he applied for his undergraduate university studies last year).<p>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.<p>After edit: I'm amazed that this thread has not yet mentioned pg's essay "What You'll Wish You'd Known,"<p><a href="http://paulgraham.com/hs.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/hs.html</a><p>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.

MIT is a national treasure because of this: <a href="http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm" rel="nofollow">http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm</a><p>OpenCourseWare is absolutely amazing. I'm using it to study SICP and then will continue with K&#38;R. I didn't go to MIT, but I'll always feel indebted to it because of these amazing resources.

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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.

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.<p>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.

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

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.<p>Resume padding is not a healthy thing and such examples could enlighten a lot of high school students.

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.<p>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.<p>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. ;)<p>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.<p>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.

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

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.<p>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.

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).<p>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.

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.

In other news, one data point is enough.

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

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.

"Software code?" Really?<p>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.

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

MIT only enrolls geeks.

Sounds like a modern Forrest Gump.

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

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