I’ve got an unusual educational background. If you’re curious, here’s a quick rundown.
High School
I convinced my Austrian state’s government to let me skip straight to graduation class and leave early.
As many, I started absolutely detesting high school early on. Classes, classes, regurgitation. Regurgitation, regurgitation, vomit knowledge. It was too dull, too easy. I needed more stimulation. I needed to get out.
Gap Years
After high school, I took three gap years. They were full of projects, work, and fun: I spun up 2-3 larger projects. I spun up a major nonprofit. Countless internships. One year of self-taught biology ending at Oxford. I met some of my best friends and mentors. I moved to the US.
I did eventually decide to apply and go to college.
Speedrunning College
I did a 4-year program at a top uni in 2 years.
I choose to do this at Berkeley rather than Oxford, because I wanted to be in the US and because universities are much more flexible here. I’m not sure I could’ve graduated twice as fast in the UK, as the system is much more constraining there.
I started with little outside credit and no AP credit whatsoever, so it was mostly from scratch. I picked math in college, because 1) I found it interesting, 2) it gave me a strong quantitative basis for other fields, and 3) it was the most flexible major.
Here’s some notes on what was crucial for me to speedrun college:
- Being at a US university with flexible majors and advisors
- Spend the first semester figuring out what I find interested, and then choosing the most interesting and flexible major/department
- Being intensly self-taught, thus skipping lecture and working with tutors instead
- Working with great tutors, e.g. via Preply or Wyzant
- Taking as many classes as I could handle
- Taking summer classes
- Ignore most humanities classes and focus on the math/neuro classes
- I decided to take the easiest humanities classes but take harder STEM classes
- Testing out of as many classes as possible
- Asking advisors and professors whether I can skip class and just earn credit via the final exam
- Garner class credit anywhere possible.
- Intense focus
- I moved to the basement of my house and avoided interactions during the day
- I didn’t check my phone until well after 5pm (being very social will mess with my ability to do good math)
- I made sure my sleep, diet, supplements, and exercise were on-point to make this pace sustainable
- Have one or two fun side projects to balance out
- Figuring out how to get around any obstacles, usually by asking, then getting rejected, then staying persistent until it worked out
- I’m grateful for some incredible friends who raised my ambitions and kept pushing me.
GPA is Meaningless
I aced high school. I aced my first college semester. Then I decided to sacrifice my GPA.
I don’t care about grades. Grades are a mediocre proxy of learning. I usually learned much more when self-teaching. It was more insightful to solve problems with my tutors, rather than doing homeworks or cramming for exams.
I was confident I had great job prospects irrespective of college. Due to my projects before college, I had been offered a job at one of the leading AI labs which I could fall back onto whenever needed. I might never have a conventional job. This failsafe allowed me to be much more focused and ambitious in my university studies. I could forgo the typical status and career ladders of GPA, prestigious internships, clubs, and undergraduate research.
PhD
I’m now doing a MS/PhD at MIT. This was quite unexpected, as I wasn’t planning on going to grad school at all. I thought I might start a start-up or similar. But I found a professor I really wanted to work with on a very specific project which wasn’t start-up-ready. I only ended up here via a vanguard professor and a vanguard program who were willing to take people with an unconventional background.
————————————
I couldn’t have done this alone. I am indebted to a now-defunct full-ride scholarship which allowed me to study in the US. I am indebted to all the tutors who spent hundred of hours teaching me, professors who put up with weird requests, and my friends who raised my ambitions even higher.
Lastly, I am especially indebted to Tyler Cowen, who made me a fellow at Emergent Ventures to support the cost of tutors, as well as being an incredible mentor all throughout. My favorite grandpa I never had! If you find yourself in a similar situation, consider applying to Emergent Ventures.
If you’re interested in more detail on some of these, or perhaps you’ve got ambitious university plans yourself which you’d need help with, you can send me an email at freeman [dot] isaak @ gmail [d] com. If I’m not focused in the lab, I will try to reply!