Ask HN: How Did you hack your education?
This is a broad question but in general i wanted to look at ways of getting ahead in school etc.
So how did you hack your education?
1) Choose classes based on the professor, not the subject. Ask around to find out who the exceptional professors are-- you'll find out, quickly-- and take whatever they are offering. A good professor can make the dullest subject come to life; a bad professor can suck the life out of the most fascinating topic.
2) Treat studying as a job. Set aside a couple of hours a day, preferably at a fixed time, to do focused, head-down, no nonsense studying. I used a study carrel in the library, every day for two hours. Two hours a day was all it took, to stay ahead of the pack in all subjects, and still have endless time for a very active social/extra-curricular life.
Then I did the minimum required to not fail out of college. (Actually, I cut it really close, flunking two courses in my major and at one point having it look like there was no conceivable way I could fulfill the graduation requirements.) In the massive amounts of time that I freed up by not doing homework, I redid the database system for a 100k-user website, wrote the school's course evaluation system, and taught myself Lisp and Haskell. I had no trouble finding jobs after college, despite my dubious graduation status.
Remember that no matter what you're "supposed" to be doing, you always have a choice in what you actually do. There're lots more paths to an impressive resume than doing well in school.
Also, always do the readings _before_ the class, not after. By offsetting your reading one week sooner then everyone else you'll have an advantage.
But always get permission first. If professors find out that you're reducing your workload like this they aren't always pleased. However, if you're talk to them (and they're reasonable) then they'll almost certainly accept it.
Careful with this. My school, at least, treats this as academic fraud unless you have agreed in advance with each professor that you will be multiple-submitting that piece of work.
I graduated with a 2.5 GPA (no thanks to ADHD) and now I'm a Software Developer at Stanford. I initially had a hard time finding a job near where I lived (Utah), and no money so I took a part time job for a bit.
Oh, and as for the actual courses: Find out who your professor is and what your book will be. Check the course website from the offering professor (or any other professor at your school) the end of the semester before you take it for homework and test solutions. I wrote some data mining scripts that basically googled "book name" + syllabus + test|homework|solutions|answers and scoured the answers for pdfs. This will get you both homework solutions and possible test problems (most professors are unoriginal) Also, search "ism" occasionally as well, as you may get lucky and find the instructors solutions manual. Buddy up with professors and find out where there offices are, as well as your major's library and search for old course books they are throwing away. For non-cs in math/physics/chemistry, if you have a unix account don't be too shy to go ahead and ls -lR ~professor/public_html > jnk.txt.
It was only when I flunked my A-Levels that I realised how little they mattered. Pretty much everything I'd learnt about computers I'd learnt off my own bat (exception: Microsoft Access). I thought about going back, but the prospect of graduating from University at 26 just seemed like a waste of time, so I got myself a job as quick as I could and tried to work my way towards games development.
I never quite got there (after flirting with the games industry I saw it was just as bad as Infosec, but even more full of idiots at the time), but overall I think I did ok.
Sadly none of the skills I learned from my extra curricular activities counted on my resume because the HRs treated it as a standard non-commitment student club thing. Truth be told now I'm having trouble finding jobs, and I wish I actually studied during my uni years because I felt I learned nothing from it... But that I don't really regret, what I regret was not starting up an actual business whilst still a student because after you graduate social pressure start to come from every direction to force you find a job (girlfriend, parents, friends, etc)
Sorry, I didn't hack my education. This is more of a not-to-do
I would work on my robot after school and my favorite teacher would write me a late note, so I only spent the last 10 minutes of every class in drivers ed.
Robot got me into college. 20 years of driving and not one speeding ticket or accident.
A limited number of "middle colleges" (such as Washtenaw Technical Middle College in MI) allow students to become full-time college students. The state paid for my college tuition and books and all of my classes counted for both high-school and college credit.
So, at 18, I graduated with a HS diploma and a community college Associate's Degree.