Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

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

http://www.commondataset.org/

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.

Harvard

http://www.provost.harvard.edu/institutional_research/Provos...

does not require a high school diploma for admission.

Neither does Princeton.

http://registrar.princeton.edu/university_enrollment_sta/com...

Nor does Yale require a high school diploma.

http://www.yale.edu/oir/cds.pdf

MIT has long reported that it does not require a high school diploma for admission.

http://web.mit.edu/ir/cds/2010/c.html

http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/qanda/questions_and_answ...

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,

http://learninfreedom.org/homeschool_growth.html

and all of the most famous and most desired colleges and universities have admitted homeschoolers,

http://learninfreedom.org/colleges_4_hmsc.html

who often have "home brew" transcripts (as my oldest son did when he applied for his undergraduate university studies last year).

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.

After edit: I'm amazed that this thread has not yet mentioned pg's essay "What You'll Wish You'd Known,"

http://paulgraham.com/hs.html

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.

I don't think the point is whether the schools require a high school diploma as a stated prerequisite; it's more whether they actually admit people with no diploma on the basis of other work.

Many / most schools admit people with no diploma on the basis of their work. This is why many students apply as Juniors in high school and how early admission works. If universities required a high school diploma as a qualification, students wouldn't be able to apply until they actually completed high school. There are many cases of people entering college as early as 13 years old, and this is not limited to MIT.

Early admission has nothing to do with having a diploma. All undergraduate and graduate programs let you apply before you have finished the previous level because the application and acceptance process takes more than the time between schools.

In cases where diplomas are required, the acceptance letter will always contain language stating that they will retract your acceptance if your grades drop an unacceptable amount or you don't finish the degree you're working on. Then most schools require you to submit another set of transcripts, proof of graduation, etc. before you officially enroll.

There were freshmen as young as 15 when I was at MIT, but as I remember it, they generally had graduated from high school. It's not that unusual to be 17 when you start college, so if you've skipped a year or two you could easily be 15 when you get to MIT (and generally, it's also fairly possible to take some extra classes and finish high school a year or two early.)

I mean, didn't you ever hear of Doogie Howser?

of course you don't have the degree when you apply and get accepted. the whole point was the guy didn't have a high school to go to, wouldn't ever get a degree, and MIT was awesome enough not to care.

yes, thank you.

Anecdotally, Berkeley did not require a high school diploma for me. I applied, was accepted, and graduated without having attended a day of high school. It didn't even seem that they cared much; admissions called once to confirm that I wasn't going to submit a diploma and never mentioned it again. Although I haven't met them, I've heard of a few others from Berkeley that had also skipped high school.

Agreed - the article makes a dubious claim. Many universities regularly accept high school students that haven't yet gotten a diploma as part of their early admission process. All that is required are standardized test scores, a transcript showing what has been learned, and evidence of excellence.

The claim that MIT is somehow a national treasure and unique here seems to miss the point. I know this because I was accepted early admission to MIT and graduated from there.

Extracurricular activities and evidence of capabilities have always carried significant weight in MIT's decision making process, but this is also the case for many other schools. It's only the graduate school process that requires evidence of completion of lower education. Try getting into a PhD program without a high school diploma or an undergraduate degree. And no, I'm not talking about honorary doctorates.

Try getting into a PhD program without a high school diploma

Does any graduate program even ASK if an applicant has a certificate of completion of secondary schooling? Which one?

(Note that the submitted post claims that the author knows someone who received multiple offers of admission to graduate programs without possessing a high school diploma, which sounds very plausible to me indeed.)

Sorry - I misspoke. I meant to say that there's no need to ask for a high school diploma as a qualifier to get into a graduate program - graduate programs require undergraduate degrees with very few (any?) exceptions. Even if the undergraduate degree did not in turn require a secondary (high school) diploma, the undergraduate program was itself a qualifier. The point is that in response to the main concept of this article that you don't need a high school diploma to get into many schools (MIT notwithstanding) is only relevant to undergraduate degrees, and even in that case, is not particular to just MIT.

actually, MIT's Media Lab does not require PhD candidates to have an undergrad education.

Yes - the world renowned Media Lab.

After college, I went to the University of Chicago for math grad school. (I didn't finish the program--the Northwestern math department was too easy in those days, and my study skills were shot.) Three of my classmates had not finished college, and one had not finished high school either. That one had gone to MIT.

This interesting to me. I'm a high school senior, and when applying to colleges many admissions departments told me that since I have been home schooled my entire life I don't have a good chance of getting. One college even told me point blank that I shouldn't even attempt to apply.

I was baffled as to why. I have good grades, above average SAT scores, a solid academic foundation(I believe). On top of that I've been working at a software company for the past year, founded multiple robotics teams in my area, and I'm now working on starting my own company.

Enough with the rant. The way I see it, if the college told me they weren't interested in me since I've been home schooled they're probably not worth my time to even apply.

One college even told me point blank that I shouldn't even attempt to apply.

Which one? I'll write to the college's admission office and tell them what they are missing (based on my acquaintance with dozens of homeschoolers in recent graduating classes).

See

http://learninfreedom.org/colleges_4_hmsc.html

for how much of an outlier such a college must be.

I too am curious about these schools. My three younger siblings were homeschooled through high school and attend/ed well regarded public and private schools. I think their hack was to get a G.E.D. but I'm not sure if that was even necessary in the end.

is this an onion piece about people who read legal documents and don't actually know how the world works? brilliant stuff.

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