Ask HN: Advice for accomplished but unchallenged high school senior

I dropped out of high school at 15 and moved out at 16. Currently 21 and running https://hackclub.com.

I know that when I was in his shoes, I felt like I tried everything to find meaning (community college classes, reading books, learning new subjects, etc), but it took me literally moving out and into a group house in San Francisco to find a community of other people like me (see https://stories.californiasunday.com/2015-06-07/real-teenage... for my story).

I think it's all about finding like-minded peers that push you. If he's into computer science, perhaps there are hackathons near him? Or maybe he'd get value out of our Slack (https://slack.hackclub.com)? We have a lot of students like him in our community.

We put together https://hackathons.hackclub.com to aggregate high school hackathons and https://mlh.io/seasons/na-2019/events is the best resource for college hackathons if it's helpful.

Does he want to be intellectually challenged and just hasn't figured out the right path yet?

If he wants a challenge, it sounds like he should look for professors offering undergraduate research opportunities. It doesn't necessarily have to be directly in CS. I worked with a professor on a polymer chemistry project while earning my undergraduate CS degree. He got someone who could troubleshoot data acquisition hardware and write software for analysis; I got to learn more about chemistry and statistics. It was a fantastic experience.

I was at a small liberal arts college. I would presume that there would be even more research opportunities at a Big 10 university, though I don't know if it is hard to make personal contacts on such large campuses.

He finds things interesting but so far I haven't detected a real passion for any subject. I think engineering is his choice because it is at least interesting and foundations in math and science come very easily to him. So it seems logical to him to go down that path even if he isn't 'passionate' about it.

My brief advice: don’t try to race through undergrad using the extra credits. Take enough time to explore and digest higher difficulty coursework while maintaining high GPA, goal should be to land in a top grad school. Also, take time for personal learning and development in undergrad. (This means things that don’t result in receiving a grade. Go study abroad or something.) Your kid sounds smart but unmotivated. Finding that motivation is up to them.

Edit: also don’t get cocky. Nothing you wrote sounds particularly impressive to me.

I hope I am not cocky. I assume that at some point soon he will hit topics that really challenge him. From my reading and interactions here on HN I kind of assume that this level of intellectual accomplishment is pretty common even though in a broader population setting it is more rare. Also I have tried to instill in him that academics is just one phase of life. Great grades doesn't necessarily mean a great and meaningful life after academics is done.

Learning that stuff is somewhat impressive. It's not spectacular, but it's not chopped liver.

> Also, take time for personal learning and development in undergrad.

In particular, learn how to deal with people - especially people who aren't like you. Technical stuff can be easy. Dealing well with people is hard.

He is more on the introverted side but he has done some of the people leadership stuff as a team captain and he has developed some pretty close friends the past couple years.

Do you have any specific suggestions about activities to broaden or deepen his people skills?

Given how many decades it took me to get better at people skills, no, he does not want my suggestions on how to get better at it...

The one thing I might say is that it starts with realizing that people actually matter. Being right matters, knowing the tech matters, but people really matter as well.

> The one thing I might say is that it starts with realizing that people actually matter.

A big, big plus to that! That's the major lesson I had to learn these past two years. Smart people can achieve clever things. Smart people who also care about the people around them can achieve great things.

Is he definitely going to the Big-10 university? I almost hate to ask this, but is attending an elite private university an option?

It is very much possible to get an outstanding education at public universities. I went to the University of Wisconsin for my Ph.D. in math, and they have a fabulous graduate program. I know some of the professors there are also very devoted to excellent undergraduate education.

But my sense is that the usual outcome is a good education, and to get a truly top-notch education at a large public university, you have to seek it out. Some people naturally do this, but seeking out opportunities is a talent -- one I mostly lacked myself as an undergraduate. From what I can discern, it's easy to miss out.

Whereas at a private university there will be a lot of peer pressure. I went to Rice as an undergrad, and I met a lot of fellow students who were incredibly accomplished and motivated at a variety of pursuits (academic and otherwise). The peer pressure very much pushed me in the right direction. Although some people don't need this, or don't really benefit from it, I did.

My point is not to say "private universities are better than public" -- there are many excellent public universities, and plenty of mediocre private ones. If the Big 10 place is his only choice, then good luck there -- all of the Big 10 schools are good universities, and some are excellent.

But, if possible, I'd suggest that he be as deliberate as possible in his choice of university. I wouldn't worry too much about whether CC credits will be accepted or not; instead, I'd try to figure out (as much as I could) what the classes are like, and what the student experience is.

I share your perspective. He got invitations to do early application at both Harvard and Yale (and yes I know that an invitation to apply is not a promise of acceptance) but it clearly suggests that they think he could make a go of it there. I also told him that it wouldn't really matter if they didn't accept the cc credits.

I used to work remotely with firms in the Boston area. I would travel to Boston several times a year and worked with a number of Harvard and other Ivy League graduates.

I tried to convey to my son the value of the network that Harvard supplies. Not only your own student cohort, but also the uniformly high quality of world-class professors and alumni who are in positions of leadership and influence. But for some reason he wanted to go to school close to home and chose our state university. At some point I decided that me pushing was not worth the tension and that he could get a good education at a state university.

Assuming that he will go to graduate school, maybe he will try for some of the elites schools at that point.

I'd suggest that this student find a way to apply what s/he's learned: write a mobile app, a game, a web app, or something like that. If s/he prefers electronics because of the past robotics work, invest in a hobbyist FPGA development board ($119 or so from Digilent), and they can create their own hardware devices.

Education is a very important thing but ultimately it has to be applied in order to be of use. A lot of people who did well within the structured confines of a classroom environment fall down when they reach the real world.

When he and I have talked projects he has been more inclined toward something on the hardware side of things. Would you recommend the FPGA board from Digilent rather than an raspberry Pi, or other android boards?

That really depends on his interests:

A Raspberry Pi board is a computer that one can conveniently attach things to and control them from software. He could build a variety of interesting systems with it.

A FPGA board would allow him to design digital circuits. He could, with enough skill, create his own custom CPU and computer from scratch. That's a fairly stiff challenge for even college juniors in a computer architecture course.