I did my bachelor's from ages 14-18; there's some things that you can't really do (frat parties) but most of the social opportunities are open to you. It helps to make friends if you are in a group-centric major - I was a chemist, so lots of long hours in the lab with cool people. There's been some questions about whether the parents push too hard in these sorts of cases; for me, I was definitely motivated more by my own desire to get out in the world and start getting real things done. This isn't always a productive desire - I wish I'd taken the time to learn more about the stuff that grew to interest me later (math/CS), instead of blitzing through all my chem requirements. I guess for other people doing the same thing the only advice I'd have is that while the cliche is that life is short, it's really longer than you think it is at that age and you shouldn't feel like you need to rush in order to maintain a position in some sort of race. It's not bad to progress fast, just make sure it isn't at the expense of finding what you really love to do.
Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15
201–210 of 223 posts
Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Up-voted for courageously (and beautifully) expressing a potentially unpopular opinion. Stay strong - it is hard not to feel guilty when other kids in kindergarten can seemingly write essays and do calculus, but in the end, it does not matter as much as it may appear to. And sometimes putting so much pressure may have unintended consequences. I know a few kids from affluent families in my town where their "early prod…
Many early achievers burn out once they enter an environment where they are no longer the smartest person in the room all of the time.
I don't know, I think "burn out" is a somewhat loaded term. Personally during either secondary and (much later) tertiary education I simply found it hard to maintain interest in a dubiously presented, dry, fixed syllabus that was executed at the speed of the slowest person in the room by teachers with thousand-mile lecture stares. It was always clear to me that learning something by rote was not an effective use of time... the initial comprehension and applications were the only interesting portions. Thus, I turned to self-directed computing. When I finally went to college, I received a scholarship in the first semester, took a year overseas, then never returned. I'd like to study more, but feel the pedagogy is too alien to deliver solid results (in terms of time efficiency) versus competing life opportunities.
Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
> These stories attract the attention of some of us because we wish we had been raised similarly. We wish we had been but we didn't live in the right time or place for an upbringing like this. I remember stealing my dad's college textbooks on mechanics and applied mathematics and sneaking them off to school; taking out Byte and Compute issues from the library when they were available... just starving for more all the…
Hell Im 23, and even with easy access to information its difficult if you have to work full-time to pay the bills. Ive been working full-time since I was 15, and no matter how many courses I completed or books I read, without financially stable parents there is no way a normal person can do this. Thats why most of us attend public school. I have full confidence most people are capable, but they would need some except…
> Thats why most of us attend public school.
Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
The grass always seems green on another side. There is a lot of benefit to the singularity of purpose at the same time there are a lot of side effects. To give you one example, homeschooled kid lacks good social skills, which are more important to success in life than mere intelligence or knowledge.
I wonder how does one learn social skills at a place where socializing is explicitly forbidden for about 85% of the time. Also, you get to interact with only about 20 other random people of the same age with the same skill set (by definition). For 10 or so years. Very realistic, totally happens in real life. I mean, schools are terribly inefficient at teaching skills/knowledge, but they are clearly even more terrible…
You talk to teachers, ergo learn the meaning of accepting someone's authority.
You learn to share common resources in the classroom with your peers.
You stick to a schedule and respect other people's time by doing things in a timely manner.
You learn to have fun safely, you learn to deal with people more capable of you (intellectually and physically). I could go on.
They all seem like pretty good social skills to me.
Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15
#205It would be interested to check in with him at 35 to see where he ended up compared to other 'normal' 35 year old MIT grads. Basically does pushing your kid like that from such and early age lead to any significant long term advantages.
no it will not.
Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15
#206I consider 4 years of my highschool a complete waste of time and would have loved to jump straight into a university right after elementary school. It would have been great to have OCW available at that time and not having to do everything myself including finding relevant books/sources. Good for Ahaan he escaped it and I wish him the very best of luck @ MIT!
Out of curiousity, why did you find it such a waste?
I felt the same as bitL. I was in PEAK (gifted and talented) since the second grade. When I started High School, one of my freshmen classes was biology. We started the year off learning about cells -- something I had learned about in 3rd grade PEAK and still remembered clearly. I was actually pissed off that I was not being taught something new. From that point on, I didn't give two shits about high school. I scraped by with Cs and played computer games until I graduated.
I did start college a little early my senior year, using a program that let me take half the day off to attend college. But I could have easily been going to college since 9th grade.
As for the social stuff, I actually lost most of my friends in HS -- they all moved to other states, and I had no desire to gain new friends (I had good friends on the internet, that I still have to this day, ~20 years later).
Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15
#207Children can do a lot more than they're given credit for. My 4-year-old demanded music lessons when his older brother was playing cello. He started on both cello and piano. Entering kindergarden, in music class the teacher had a keyboard, asked the children who could play. A little girl banged out chopsticks. Another little boy picked out twinkle,twinkle,little star. My son Andrew raised his hand, and played some Bee…
Fun fact: terrible handwriting is correlated with high dopamine levels in the brain, which is correlated with increased brain activity (~ intelligence).
Albert, watch your kerning! This is far too legible.
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3045994/albert-einsteins-handwri...
Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15
#208I envy this guy so much! I felt delayed by school, which offered slow-paced, and uninspiring environment (learning interesting stuff on my own, after the lessons; at ~15 I started reading academic textbooks in physics and chemistry).
Right now I am very much for adjusting education to students, rather than the other way around (without expecting that everyone gets magically enlightened at the age of 18-19). Especially as the cohort-based learning is a direct heritage of the Prussian education (for teaching soldiers, not - scientists or engineers).
Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have an impressive background! If I may ask, how did (do?) you manage to read 10+ books a week? Was it sheer determination, or were you a fast reader? I know that quantity of books isn't necessarily indicative of any knowledge gained; however, I would love to work through my reading list a little quicker than my current rate.
I don't have as much time as I used to, having a job, marriage, and child now, so I don't currently read 10+ books a week (I'm more at 2 or 3 a month now). But when I was a kid, - I usually read a book or two a week as part of school, - We typically were done with 'school' by lunchtime, and so I had a lot more free time than other kids. - I stayed up late reading quite a bit - We lived 15 minutes outside of town so I…
My brother is similar, he has a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf completely full of books, the books being double layered, the outer layer jutting out like he has no other space left to put his books. I find he reads more like game of thrones and historical fantasy than Star Wars or Star Trek though. He isn't married and he still reads, now on his phone.
Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
>My point in typing up this story is not to say that I am or was awesome. Are you sure? Being a smart fellow, you must know that your experience is not evidence that this young man was not "pushed" too much and that he will "be fine." That said, my suspicion is that Rungta's early achievement is not cause for concern about his social development. Conducting research, for instance, is an intensely collaborative experi…
> Are you sure? Well, of course, all of us deal with pride and so part of my motivation to type up the story is that I'm proud of what I've accomplished, yeah. > Being a smart fellow, you must know that your experience is not evidence that this young man was not "pushed" too much and that he will "be fine." Of course my experience is not evidence of someone else's experience. However, I have experience being homescho…
> Well, of course, all of us deal with pride and so part of my motivation to type up the story is that I'm proud of what I've accomplished, yeah.
What's there to be proud of? Seems like your "accomplishments" are pretty mediocre, and not anywhere the level of your siblings. More like a story of wasted/neglected born-with talents (smarts).