71–80 of 134 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There can't be THAT many. Unless my math is wrong, they can only be at most 1% of the folks taking the SATs, right?
1,700,000 SAT takers -> 17,000 people in the top 1%. Selecting the top 10% of those gets you 1700 students, which is quite close to the size of Harvard's acceptance statistic (of 2000)
This kid is awesome but this particular comment really made me sad: "Spending 3+ hours a day on a project during junior and senior year did not help my grades. My counselor told me that I wouldn't get into the top colleges because of this reason. I believed her and didn't apply to my dream colleges."
Is there something lesser about going to a state school? I didn't build a Farnsworth Fusor in high school but my school is ranked about the same as UCSC, hah.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And at least from my experience, that is wrong wrong wrong. I was a solidly B student in high school, but I had some extracurriculars (not quite building fusion reactors) that I devoted an absurd amount of time to and excelled at. And I got into MIT.
I would have to imagine these days average high school GPA for incoming freshman to MIT is > 4.0
My son and daughter are both doing well, but my son loves to experiment outside of school.
I have been encouraging my son to experiment and learn, and he has taken it to a higher level than I had imagined. I have bought him a telescope, and a 3D printer over the years. He works for his own equipment and supplies too. More each year.
Some of his experiments or demonstrations are recreated and slightly modified YouTube projects, and others are very original. I always tell him that being able to duplicate somebody else's work is good practice to learn proper rigor and familiarity with equipment and practices.
He is now a senior in high school, maintaining an A+ (>= 95) average in honor and AP classes. He won best Chemistry project in the whole county.
His biggest complaint is the amount of homework schools still dish out, several hours (3 to 4) each night. It takes away from his self-teaching and experimentation. Disclaimer: I am not too keen on public or institutionalized education. I think you learn more by doing projects that tie-in various disciplines, and accordingly I dropped out of college in the 80s to follow my passions. I've done well for myself considering I grew up below the poverty line when I was younger.
I was smelting metals in the 90s in my rural backyard without the internet or YouTube, and playing with TV cathode ray tubes in the late 70s. The former I could not have done where I grew up in Brooklyn, the latter was good to do most anywhere while tube sets were still around ;) I once tied the negative lead of a 9 volt DC transformer to my then sick Mom's big toe, and the other to a potted fern with copiously-watered soil, and then touched her same top foot with a connecting lead from the plant! Yes, stupid, but I was 10, and I had just read Frankenstein. Plus my parents were very positive about my inquisitive nature and doings. Mom passed in her older years, but never forgot the incident in a proud way.
My son is thinking on going to Germany for school due to the quality of education, and the fact that it is now free (almost, minus taxes and other expenses) for foreigners as well as citizens. He is also considering just starting on his own after high school, since he has acquired my distaste for institutionalized learning. The short of this bias: age-segregation, broken curriculum, non-integrated areas of study, homework and memorization over problem solving, etc. You can't even do certain experiments in school because they are considered too dangerous, or inappropriate. I do not try and push him too much either way. My ex-wife, is more conservative, and is hoping he will go to university.
Time will tell...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And at least from my experience, that is wrong wrong wrong. I was a solidly B student in high school, but I had some extracurriculars (not quite building fusion reactors) that I devoted an absurd amount of time to and excelled at. And I got into MIT.
I would have to imagine these days average high school GPA for incoming freshman to MIT is > 4.0
[0] http://www.acceptancerate.com/schools/massachusetts-institut...
My son pulls off some cool experiments all on his own (I stay out of it apart from the phone call consultation, or YouTube video call) with salvage and other workarounds, with the money he earns and my contributions.
These brothers have a freakin' mini-Tony-Stark lab in their house! Good for them and their parents. I like to see money spent this way rather than traveling team sports and uniforms. My take is sciency types, aka nerds, indulge more in solitary sports - rock climbing, skating, biking if they have time away from building a frigging nuclear fusion reactor in the bedroom!
Looks like the Fusion Reactor story caused a meltdown of Reddit's servers :)
The link is returning a 503 error: "all of our servers are busy right now. please try again in a minute" Looks like the Fusion Reactor story caused a meltdown of Reddit's servers :)
There had been kids who built atomic reactor in their parents house and garden shed. Needless to say it's nowadays a superfund site and some people suffer from poising and radioactive materials. I think there is even a documentary about the boy scout guy who built a atomic reactor and afaik it was on HN before.
[disclaimer: While the reaction vacuum chamber seen in the video can be found at universities and is certainly less harmful than an open atomic reactor (see real boy scout guy story from above), it never the less involves substances that have to be handled with great care]
Edit: the boy scout guy David Hahn built an radiactive reactor at home, he was 17 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn
Let's hope there is some supervison. There had been kids who built atomic reactor in their parents house and garden shed. Needless to say it's nowadays a superfund site and some people suffer from poising and radioactive materials. I think there is even a documentary about the boy scout guy who built a atomic reactor and afaik it was on HN before. [disclaimer: While the reaction vacuum chamber seen in the video can b…
In this case it is a deuterium-deuterium fusion reactor and both the fuel and the waste (helium 3) are pretty safe to handle. The device is only radioactive while it is operating.
That being said, he did say that he got tons of help from professors so at the very least he knows exactly how to remain safe.