9 ms·

Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

416 points by badboyboyce 11y ago

sopooneo 11y ago
To me, this exemplifies the true potential of online education: not to lift the masses, but to enable the geniuses.
- thewarrior 11y ago
  Well Ramanujan only needed one textbook to enable him. The tru e potential is in allowing everyone to get atleast a momentary ,fleeting glimpse of the worlds that the geniuses have opened up for us.
dagw 11y ago
It would be interested to check in with him at 35 to see where he ended up compared to other 'normal' 35 year old MIT grads. Basically does pushing your kid like that from such and early age lead to any significant long term advantages.
- jasode 11y ago
  >pushing your kid like that I dunno about this... we're not intimate with his family so it seems a little unfair to characterize his parents as "pushing him". For all we know, the opposite may have happened and his parents were "holding him back" and trying to prevent a precocious teen from rushing into MIT at age 14 instead of 15. As far as the article's text reveals, it says his parents were responsive and not pushy: "Rungta is grateful to his parents and to MIT for being responsive to his needs every step of the way."
  - suby 11y ago
    I think that scenario is unlikely given the fact that they started the MIT preparation at 5.
    - marrs 11y ago
      I love how you think you can deduce that after reading a couple of paragraphs of an MIT article.
  - evook 11y ago
    Yeah for sure... I attended a school for gifted kids. Those who where a lot younger than the rest of us where always pushed by their parents and their parents always told they where not pushing. And that is a first hand experience watching 42 gifted smart young children pushed in our education system and over their interessents on behalf of their parents. I attended this school for 6 years. It was a pain, and as if school wasn't boring enough ( school is mandatory where I live ) you had to consider every word you wanted to say as a 16/17/18 year old when there where 9/10/11 year old depressed and ADHDish, but extremely smart kids around you the whole time. In the end I am a hundred percent sure every kid can study MIT classes at every age. Most of the stuff is rational trivia. Also beeing gifted has nothing to do with your grades or your ability to follow classes or lectures. Because that's something your parents could've pushed on you, but for sure you are allowed to be happy that they didn't.
    - ww2 11y ago
      "Most of the stuff is rational trivia" --- rational trivia, I like the word.
      - evook 11y ago
        I don't know if you're beeing sarcastic or not. If so, excuse me please. Anyway you are probably right. I am still not sure about that phrasing. What I wanted to refer to, is that the Stuff you get teached at MIT still isn't any harder or easier than the stuff you can read or maybe already have read in books anyway. When I started college my profs where constantly referring to Tanenbaum, Dijkstra and co. Texts I have read and understood 5 years before I finished school.
        jnbiche 11y ago
        Perhaps you shouldn't extrapolate your experience to that of students at MIT (or other universities outside of your country you've not attended, for that matter)? I'm in the U.S., and I can tell you that having gone to a good, but regular state university for undergrad, and then to much more prestigious university for grad school, the difference between the two was striking. I went from being one of the smarter students in the class, to one of the least smart (or at best, the middle). I expected this university to be better, but it was quite a shock just how much better it was. Is it possible that what they teach at MIT might go beyond the "trivia" or rote memorization that you describe being taught at your country's schools?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - draven 11y ago
    It seems he has a passion for learning (at the end of the article): "As he ponders declaring a major next year, Rungta pauses for a moment, and then he lights up. “In an ideal world, I would want to major in everything.”"
  - rogeryu 11y ago
    > As far as the article's text reveals, it says his parents were responsive and not pushy: "Rungta is grateful to his parents and to MIT for being responsive to his needs every step of the way." Sure, he will never say bad things about his parents, especially not in the media. He's from India! As I see it parents (in general) can bend things so that children do not want anything else than what their parents want. This is not to blame the parents - they probably don't know better. From this story I can't tell what is the case. His parents are maybe the best ever, that not only want best for their kid, but actually let him find out what that is.
- lugus35 11y ago
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  - sp332 11y ago
    http://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t05.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t05.htm
  - balls187 11y ago
    For a long while, his site was a top google result when searching for photography tips.
- auvi 11y ago
  Considering the average age of MIT freshman students is 18 years, he'll be starting with other teenagers. I hope that the 3 years difference will not prevent him from having a meaningful social life there. I think that branding him as a "child prodigy" just because he is one will help much. Instead I would like to see news like "Young MIT student has solved such and such hard problem for all mankind".
- untilHellbanned 11y ago
  no it will not.
huac 11y ago
Their restaurant (Cafe Spice @ MIT) is pretty good!
- linuxkerneldev 11y ago
  That was the first question I was curious about. Secondly, which dish is their specialty...
allendoerfer 11y ago
As long as he did not exclusively learn technical stuff but also got a humanistic education, which we do not know, and enjoyed his childhood, which I think he did, because you cannot perform like that without enjoying it, I think this is pretty amazing parenting. You could find other reasons to nitpick (Did he do sports? Did he develop social competences by interacting with other kids?), but even if these things are true, which we do not know, there are children, who got a regular education, that are still lacking in these regards and they are not enrolled at MIT at 15.
- _lce0 11y ago
  > Did he do sports? Did he develop social competences by interacting with other kids? Completely agree with you. He has the rest of his life to get better at those areas
- codingdave 11y ago
  I'm not even sure it matters how broad his education was, if (as you said) he has been happy with his life, but also as long as he is adaptable enough to switch directions if he becomes unhappy with his direction later in life. Many of us old folk change direction over the years. The key to a happy life in the long run is not to know everything when you are young, or to have picked the right direction from the start, but to recognize when your direction is no longer fulfilling, and to know when and how to change when you are old.
  - allendoerfer 11y ago
    I think a basic understanding of history, culture and how our society works is absolutely required. I think it is our responsibility to prevent at least the worst mistakes we did in the past and preserve at least the best achievements. We have turned in circles in the past and will do it again if we do not get that we turned in circles.
    - stuxnet79 11y ago
      Not a truism for everyone. The history, culture, and society I learned in school was too Eurocentric / Western and was completely irrelevant to my personal development and sense of identity as a minority in this society.
littletimmy 11y ago
I don't know man, I think there's something to be said about having a childhood. Being from India myself, I know the tremendous pressure parents put on kids to succeed. I hope that this kid wasn't subject to the same.
- Spearchucker 11y ago
  Agree with you. My wife and I are already arguing over the future of our 3-year-old. She wants him to learn to read and write. I want him to play, have time to be a boy, get in trouble, kiss a girl, and have a care-free childhood. We're so obsessed with money, and forget all about the one currency that really matters. Time. Time to live. I'd rather he were average academically, and experience life exceptionally.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    You can combine the two. Paint letters onto toy cars, paint a car park with letters in the spaces. Or paint letters onto rocks, and use a toy dump truck to load them up and move them around. Use synthetic phonics and sound out the letters when the cars are parked or the rocks are collected. (but in general I agree with you)
  - lmm 11y ago
    I "had a childhood" in the sense of going to high school. It damn near killed me, and quite possibly would have if I hadn't been fortunate enough to skip a year, or to do a few university-like courses. I look back on those wasted, miserable years and wish I'd had other options - or thought to seize them for myself. Talk to your child, see what he actually likes. Make sure he knows that he always has a choice - years later my parents told me they thought about homeschooling but didn't think they knew enough to, and couldn't afford a tutor, but they never even mentioned these thoughts to me at the time.
  - jazzyk 11y ago
    Up-voted for courageously (and beautifully) expressing a potentially unpopular opinion. Stay strong - it is hard not to feel guilty when other kids in kindergarten can seemingly write essays and do calculus, but in the end, it does not matter as much as it may appear to. And sometimes putting so much pressure may have unintended consequences. I know a few kids from affluent families in my town where their "early prodigies" are now college drop-outs.
erebus_rex 11y ago
Some commenters are afraid this kid was pushed way too hard and did not have time to learn proper social skills, play sports, get a holistic education in the humanities. This all might be true but the article makes it very clear how precocious this kid is. I don't think his parents were trying to push him. If anything they seemed to struggle to get him the things that he needed to succeed. Some people are just so laser focused on their desires that you just have to let them do their thing. I'm sure if he wants to play sports or learn history, he'll excel at it too.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  If that's all his desires then good for him. I hope he doesn't corner himself too much and experience other parts of life nonetheless. Very important.
- papapra 11y ago
  "I'm sure if he wants to play sports or learn history, he'll excel at it too." I'm not so sure about that, maybe it depends how you see excel
ucaetano 11y ago
And then people wonder why there's a teenager suicide epidemic in Palo Alto and Silicon Valley in general...
- jnwrd 11y ago
  The problem is mostly that parents and teachers have expectations for students beyond what most of them are intellectually capable of. There is also an excessive emphasis on empty credentialism. Both problems could be tempered via a recognition that people are not blank slates, some people like Ahaan are simply smarter than others, and the average high schooler should not be compared against him.
- thearn4 11y ago
  I think most people have a hometown that, even if they leave, always know they can go back to and make a simple life for themselves. I can imagine it being hard to grow up in a place where you have a pretty reasonable expectation of never being able to return to and live in on your own terms, unless you manage to stay the top 1% of the 1%.
rtl49 11y ago
“I will never forget the feeling of walking into the lobby of Building 7, looking up, and then touching the pillars to see if they were real. I couldn’t believe I was at MIT. My life and my ambitions moved to another level at that moment.” I think this impressive achievement is more a testament to the role that aspirations acquired during childhood play in determining a person's success than it is a reflection of this young man's intelligence. Yes, the latter is necessary, but it isn't sufficient. I have little doubt that there are many 18 year olds entering MIT's class of 2019 who could have entered at 15 had they been provided a similarly advantageous upbringing. These stories attract the attention of some of us because we wish we had been raised similarly. Had we not devoted our attention as children to, say, petty family turmoil or a hedonistic preoccupation with computer games, perhaps we would have progressed through life with a singularity of purpose and self-confidence that would have situated us in a better position today. We might have been spared years in our teens and twenties trying to find a sense of meaning in our work, unlike this fellow, who seems to have it figured out. I won't speculate about his social skills. I've met college students his age running the gamut from borderline autistic to social butterfly. Yes, the sense of "peerlessness" must be a bit alienating, but many of us have had this experience without leapfrogging high school.
- collyw 11y ago
  Personally I am pretty glad that I had a "normal" childhood.
  - rtl49 11y ago
    I'm glad to hear it. Some of us have had neither a normal childhood, nor the perks of one dedicated to study. Thus my remark.
  - hackerboos 11y ago
    When I was 5 years old I had trouble mixing up the letters b and d. Given an MIT course at that age I probably would have ignored it in favor of playing outside.
    - 11y ago
bitL 11y ago
I consider 4 years of my highschool a complete waste of time and would have loved to jump straight into a university right after elementary school. It would have been great to have OCW available at that time and not having to do everything myself including finding relevant books/sources. Good for Ahaan he escaped it and I wish him the very best of luck @ MIT!
- eljimmy 11y ago
  Out of curiousity, why did you find it such a waste?
  - legohead 11y ago
    I felt the same as bitL. I was in PEAK (gifted and talented) since the second grade. When I started High School, one of my freshmen classes was biology. We started the year off learning about cells -- something I had learned about in 3rd grade PEAK and still remembered clearly. I was actually pissed off that I was not being taught something new. From that point on, I didn't give two shits about high school. I scraped by with Cs and played computer games until I graduated. I did start college a little early my senior year, using a program that let me take half the day off to attend college. But I could have easily been going to college since 9th grade. As for the social stuff, I actually lost most of my friends in HS -- they all moved to other states, and I had no desire to gain new friends (I had good friends on the internet, that I still have to this day, ~20 years later).
- peter303 11y ago
  I think I read the entire non fiction section of the local library to avoid my HS boredom. This was before the internet when you can find so much more online.
sakri 11y ago
"When Rungta turned 12, his family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, as his parents realized he needed to be in a more intellectually stimulating environment." My friends in Fort Lauderdale are gonna LOVE this!
- michael_h 11y ago
  Ft. Lauderdale has intellectually stimulating aspects, just not of the highly technical variety. The arts scene, however...
russnewcomer 11y ago
I applaud this family, and am glad for Ahaan's sake that he isn't just shipping himself off to college, but is going to still have his support structure. I was homeschooled, along with my two sisters, my entire educational career until college. We all started taking college classes early, my older sister correspondence at 14, my twin and I correspondence at 15. All of us took classes at local colleges before starting 'real college'. All of us scored high on our ACTs, all of us got scholarships to college. My parents didn't really push us, we were just smart. We had childhoods, I was a starter on the basketball team, and played college soccer for a year. I also read 10+ books a week, played way, way too much Civilization and Total Annihilation, and did plenty of volunteer work, especially at our local public access station. For my sisters, going to and living at 'real college' worked out well, they both succeeded in their own ways (my older sister graduated with two masters a few days after she turned 21, my twin sister received a lot of recognition from professionals in her field before graduating, was salutatorian, etc), whereas I didn't do so well being away from home and the support structure. I'm lazy, and I thought could just not do assignments I didn't want to and do well enough on other assignments to make up for it. Long story short, my GPA dropped enough to lose my scholarship, and I decided that the private college experience wasn't worth borrowing tens of thousands of dollars for. So I moved home, finished my bachelors from the state university in town. Snagged an internship and then got a job offer from that company, essentially during my junior year for a full time job, contingent on finishing school. My point in typing up this story is not to say that I am or was awesome. My point is that I am pretty sure that Ahaan Rungta is a pretty smart kid, his parents probably pushed him less than you think, and that as long as he and his family figure out how to navigate the maturity journey, he'll be fine.
- rtl49 11y ago
  >My point in typing up this story is not to say that I am or was awesome. Are you sure? Being a smart fellow, you must know that your experience is not evidence that this young man was not "pushed" too much and that he will "be fine." That said, my suspicion is that Rungta's early achievement is not cause for concern about his social development. Conducting research, for instance, is an intensely collaborative experience that he will probably have, and would provide ample opportunity for interacting with people of many ages. He probably will be fine.
ktzar 11y ago
Some people force maturing, when maturing comes on its own... And by doing so they loose childhood, which never comes back.
- NameNickHN 11y ago
  Some people mature earlier than others without being foced. For some the ideal childhood is playing outside, playng games or playing sports. For others it's technology and science.
  - sklogic 11y ago
    Exactly. Tinkering with things is not any different from any other games children play.
mkj 11y ago
"two-year-old son — already an avid reader" sounds somewhat unusual?
- NameNickHN 11y ago
  There are people who have a hard time learning to read and some who never manage it despite making every effort. Why is it so hard to believe that there are people at the other end of the spectrum who are able to learn to read as an infant?
  - nibnib 11y ago
    This isn't normally distributed. Would you find someone learning to feed at 18 as surprising as someone learning at a week old? Reading at this age is certainly unusual.
    - NameNickHN 11y ago
      Normal? No, but neither surprising.
  - mkj 11y ago
    No, I'm not saying it's unbelievable. More that some of the comments here seem to be assuming that the kid was just pushed quite hard, but there seems to be more to it.
- rachelandrew 11y ago
  According to my parents I could read at age 3, I can certainly remember petitioning my father to be allowed to read The Hobbit when I was 5. My mother got into trouble when I started school because the teachers didn't know what to do with a 5 year old who could read and write! I was taught by the "look and say" method, now not used in British schools at least. They teach phonics now. Interestingly my daughter is dyslexic and struggled horribly in school to learn by the phonics method. It was when I started teaching her the old fashioned way that she picked it up.
  - 11y ago
Chrossler 11y ago
We are unable to judge anything about this kid. The article is written by the school and has a happy fairy tale feel to it, as a school article should. It is inspiring and interesting and gives you a thirst for intelligence. I hope the kid kills it and doesn't end up like phaedrus... I'm sure he'll do awesome
eddotman 11y ago
I've hung out with Ahaan at school several times -- some people in the comments here are speculating that going to university this young might make it hard to adjust (socially), but honestly I assumed he was like ~20 (i.e. just like any other college-age dude). I had no clue he had such a neat backstory of how he got to MIT!
- erroneousfunk 11y ago
  Yeah, there was a guy at my alma mater (Olin College of Engineering) who entered at 14 or 15. He was perfectly normal and well-adjusted. I mean, it was a weird cloistered tech school environment, so "normal" and "well-adjusted" are relative here, but I also didn't realize he was so young until he mentioned it. I mean, sure, you get the occasional Ted Kaczynski, but the vast majority of kids I've heard of entering college early seem well-adjusted.
  - linuxkerneldev 11y ago
    > you get the occasional Ted Kaczynski Occasional? Ted was one of a kind. And apparently, you don't "get" someone like him. Allegedly, rather, you "make" that kind of person through government sponsored psychological torture experiments. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard-and-the-making-of-the-unabomber/378239/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard-...
    - erroneousfunk 11y ago
      Yes, I was being a little glib when I said that. That's, unfortunately, who a lot of people automatically jump to when they think of "maladjusted precocious children/young adults" I think there was a RadioLab episode about him as well?
  - skiphs 11y ago
    A better example for this crowd would be Hans Reiser, who skipped high school and went straight to UC Berkeley.
- 11y ago
wodenokoto 11y ago
I just don't understand how a 5 year old can comprehend a college level course. How does he know enough math to follow along any scientific course? How can he be well enough versed in literature to follow along a liberal arts course, or history to comprehend a sociology course?
- drcode 11y ago
  Well, the first-level answer would be "work backwards"... ...as soon as you don't understand the math, google it, then keep doing that until you start understanding things (though this is probably more what a 7yo would do, not a 5yo)
- yeukhon 11y ago
  Maybe his IQ is higher than an average person? That would be my guess.
- swiley 11y ago
  The math will be a prerequisite so the university will handle making sure he has taken a high enough math. Honestly the hard part about college courses is motivation to study and do assignments not comprehension, so if he is motivated enough he'll do well.
gokhan 11y ago
If you're skeptical about pushing children towards their limits, here's another take by Derek Sivers: https://sivers.org/kimo https://sivers.org/kimo
NDizzle 11y ago
His parents are amazing. If he's like most 15 year olds he won't realize that, but when he will it'll be quite a moment. That took a lot of courage. Props.
sotojuan 11y ago
This is awesome. As someone who can't wait to graduate college so I can teach myself stuff through OCW (there's some irony there), I am glad it's available. It's a really great project.
PaulHoule 11y ago
This seems to have been drawn from the same statistical distribution of many stories that center around this idea that "MIT students are smarter than students anywhere." The ideology of MIT is that you should go to MIT daycare, then MIT kindergarten and all the way through to the PhD and beyond, and if they had enough people in that pipeline they wouldn't bother taking applications from anywhere else. That idea is definitely one of the things holding Boston back in terms of startups -- you definitely see research labs at MIT that don't hire postdocs from Stanford or Cornell because they only want to hire MIT people. There are plenty of MIT grads who are mediocre at best but many local startups (particularly those started by MIT grads) don't realize this and often make up all sorts of excuses about why things went wrong.
- ultrafilter 11y ago
  In contrast (but not contradiction) with your experience, as an MIT undergraduate math major applying for PhD programs, my advisor warned me that the math dept. doesn't admit their own graduates. I applied anyway and indeed was not admitted (which was fine since I was admitted to UW-Madison, where I most wanted to go).
jnwrd 11y ago
He seems to have tremendous breadth of curiosity, it will be interesting to see what he ultimately ends up specializing in. MIT is a big place, and trying to "major in everything" will almost certainly not turn out well.
ausjke 11y ago
The school system is really best for the kids-in-the-middle, i.e. not the best fit for the really talented, as the case with this MIT kid here, neither is it for the D/F students. Public school was originated in Europe for training workers if memory serves me right. Since Bush the public education system is more geared towards to the D/F students nonetheless, i.e., the no child left behind policy, a road to hell. This might have something to do with Bush, who is about a D student himself. A solution I would like to see, is tax-relief for home-schooling families, they don't use the public education system so why pay for the school district property tax? This looks like a win-win for the family and the nation in the long run. Human races compete and evolve, focusing on the left-behinders are so against nature, yes they should be taken care of, but the focus really should be on the other side.
- allendoerfer 11y ago
  > Public school was originated in Europe for training workers if memory serves me right. Actually, no. The idea is associated with Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightment and stuff like this. This was years before workers had to be educated. It was actually about humanism and liberty from the catholic church.
cognivore 11y ago
What I like is he came to America to go to MIT. That great mind is now an American mind, and with his family origin, I would hope a world thinking and sympathetic mind. Perhaps he can do good in this world.
Mimu 11y ago
So many people praising this brainwashing I can't even believe it. I'm ready for the downvote but please comment to why it is not the case. That's a pretty story but if their parents went on teaching him something else than physics everybody would go on their horses and scream for child abuse. What choice did the kid have? None. Dude didn't go out and was full MIT mode from the age of 5.
klogw 11y ago
I remember him from Brilliant.org, saw him solving problems there.
venuzr 11y ago
I find his drive and his parent's support commendable. Being someone who has not been homeschooled and does not know anyone who has, I am extremely curious about it. -How does one go about replicating this kind of success? Or even moderate success. In typical schools, you have some measure of whether your child is "succeeding". How does one go about doing the same for home-schooled children. -How do you go about providing the structure that schools provides towards increasingly complex material which will keep the child engaged and learning at the same time. Not having children myself but watching my brother's children, I can see that the structure provided for children is extremely important, even for simple things like when to have food, go to bed, practice music etc. Are there any good resources for raising home schooled children and providing structure?
- stuxnet79 11y ago
  Extremely important in what sense? What are the specific benefits you see to having a rigid structure? I have a little sister who is in my estimation smart, but spends every waking moment (when not in school or finishing up homework) on her iPad playing video games and watching Youtube videos. I sometimes wonder if a little bit of prodding on the part of my parents would help her find other hobbies. I personally feel like I suffered from my parent's laissez faire attitude.
biggio 11y ago
<blockquote>"elementary and secondary education from OpenCourseWare"</blockquote> How do you do that?
biggio 11y ago
How do you get "elementary and secondary education from OpenCourseWare"?
CrimsnBlade 11y ago
>Some people think I’m gifted, but I don’t think so Taking physics and chemistry classes at 5 years old? Call me crazy, but I think that can certainly be considered gifted by most standards.
- oberstein 11y ago
  Just another instance of dunning-kruger. When he's older and had more interactions with lower IQ people, he may come to terms with his gifts...
peter303 11y ago
MIT has always had a few of these "show pony" geniuses around. Two of them sadly committed suicide during my years at MIT. I dont know their minds, but I guess some of their sense of self worth was being a smart ass and marching to to a different drummer. When you are surrounded by thousands almost as smart as you you dont really stand out for being you anymore. MIT people are impresses by you doing something really clever. Also I suspect these guys were very lonely too. I hope Adaan has a sense of self worth built on more than being at MIT.
jonesb6 11y ago
The main argument for why this ok seems to be: "Children are able to learn more, therefore any obsessively accelerated curriculum is justified even if it detracts from other aspects of child hood" Um, I think that's just an excuse for not learning as an adult and pushing your own failed dreams on your offspring.
hemantv 11y ago
On a side note, I am very curious how family immigrate to US. From what I know there is no good path as Indian to immigrate legally. Green card has 6 - 12 years of wait.
- rchaud 11y ago
  I have 3 friends from Bangladesh whose parents received their US green cards in 2000, 2002 and 2003. They had all applied for them in the early 1990s. I rarely hear of this happening anymore, so I imagine the process was more straightforward back then.
antidaily 11y ago
Virgin at 35.
- oberstein 11y ago
  But magic powers at 30.
- aidenn0 11y ago
  I doubt it. The Massachusetts age of consent is 16, so there's no legal barriers by his Sophomore year. I haven't been to MIT but, for the college campuses I'm familiar with, it's harder to avoid getting laid than it is to get laid.
free2rhyme214 11y ago
I wonder what he does after school. Impressive accomplishment! That's a lot of focus for a kid.
JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Children can do a lot more than they're given credit for. My 4-year-old demanded music lessons when his older brother was playing cello. He started on both cello and piano. Entering kindergarden, in music class the teacher had a keyboard, asked the children who could play. A little girl banged out chopsticks. Another little boy picked out twinkle,twinkle,little star. My son Andrew raised his hand, and played some Beethoven sonata. The teacher asked him if he knew what that was. He told her. He's not a prodigy. Has terrible handwriting! The 1st-grade evaluation suggested he had fine-motor issues. Yet he could play 64th-note runs on the piano endlessly. Its all because of regular teaching and fun practicing. Kids can learn what they put their minds to. But it takes 10,000 hours not only from the pupil but from the tutor. My wife put in the time; Andrew plays wonderfully.
- MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
  Fun fact: terrible handwriting is correlated with high dopamine levels in the brain, which is correlated with increased brain activity (~ intelligence).
  - Omnipresent 11y ago
    Any link for additional reading on that fun fact?
  - amarpatel 11y ago
    starts writing poorly on purpose
  - plcancel 11y ago
    Albert, watch your kerning! This is far too legible. http://www.fastcodesign.com/3045994/albert-einsteins-handwriting-is-now-a-font http://www.fastcodesign.com/3045994/albert-einsteins-handwri...
ChuckMcM 11y ago
I think this was a great story and I hope to hear more like it. It has been one of the "promises" of the Internet that smart children could get access to as much learning as they can handle, breaking the bottleneck that was the availability of local resources. Of course not everyone cares, or wants to learn all they can, but for those who do it is important to give them that opportunity. And it is in that context that I think the availability of course ware will help us guide smart, motivated, kids before their boredom leads them into an ill advised adventure.
n7c3c1 11y ago
reads article about unbelievably driven and hard working young person watches video of American students at Yale yelling about safe spaces o_o
wuschel 11y ago
Truly impressive accomplishment. My congratulations. And now imagine that you actually do not need MIT. In comparison to what you have done, it is another rigid institution with a more or less rigid structure. I hope the educational landscape will keep changing, giving more alternative bodies to aquire high end knowledge, e.g. through hacker spaces, virtual/internet based platforms, etc.
whatsup 11y ago
Tortoise wins the race.
samstave 11y ago
I'd love to see a list of the order in which each class was provided to the child.
sawthat 11y ago
Don't know this kid, or this situation, but to commenters here who seem envious, or young people who are inspired: being a child prodigy expires at age 25. Being known for your youth means that once you aren't young anymore you've lost that. If your identity is wrapped up in being precocious be ready with a second plan.
- stared 11y ago
  I don't know how many miss "being known". I think many regret not having so much intellectual stimulation, or opportunities to learn. (Seriously, how many of us, the HN crowd, considered their Primary School intellectually challenging?)
droopybuns 11y ago
I would love some guidance on how to take advantage of OCW w/ my kids. I don't want to reproduce Ahaan's story. My father was a biology teacher and always had tons of text books we could just kind of grind through growing up. I'm not doing the same for my kids at this time- mostly for lack of resources. Just skimming through the OCM content- I don't see material in physics or science that can be used to introduce kids to the scientific method. It mostly looks like baptism by fire. Any tips?
- eddotman 11y ago
  If OCW is too advanced to start, try Khan Academy first. It's great for K-12 material.
umutisik 11y ago
It is better for the kids to praised about what they are doing rather than what they are getting. Personally, I don't care what prestigious thing he got. This kid is amazing for having studied so many things on his own. The real aim here should be to be engaged and to be learning; which are things this kid seems to be have done plenty of. It is so cool that we now have all these learning resources accessible easily. It's interesting how this kind of thing makes one think about their own life. I went to a talk by a computer scientist yesterday. He is studying cryptography. You could tell that he was so engaged, getting so much joy from his subject. People were interested in what he was explaining. You could tell that he is just loving every minute of his job. This is the kind of engagement level I am looking for. And by the way, I don't think one needs to be top-level at what they do to get there.
chris_va 11y ago
I went to college early (14, graduated 18). I've spoken with a lot of similar folks over the years, and the biggest takeaway for me was that everyone's experience and needs were different. Some people were pushed by their parents, but mostly it was people who were bored with the normal experience and found an out. Out of that set, maybe about half regret it, and wished they had slowed down and enjoyed high school/childhood more. People tend to assume that folks who go to college early would be socially awkward, but that was not my experience. The social/emotional intelligence distribution was pretty normal. Out of everything, the common denominator was supportive parents.
- hedgehog 11y ago
  My observations are similar, the kids have to want to do the work and it's hard enough that parental support is essential. It's too hard otherwise. The University of Washington has a program that brings in 12ish early entrants each year. The program's process seems to be repeatable and although the staff have a strong liberal arts bent they produce students in all fields including at least two YC founders.
- caseysoftware 11y ago
  I started early but was dual-enrolled during high school. It was kind of the best of both worlds and limited some of the trouble/boredom I had. Anyway, supportive (or desperate) parents are a key aspect.
- wahsd 11y ago
  What do you mean by "supportive parents"? I think that eludes some. You can be supportive without really being helpful. Can anyone provide some context as to what that support looked like?
  - Klinky 11y ago
    Not being destructive, to start with. Providing a stable environment. Being aware of the options available in life and having the resources to take advantage of them. A true desire to see your child succeed and find themselves, rather than using them to fulfill your purpose or goals. Showing them the success and happiness your own life brings you.
benlower 11y ago
Sees the world in buckyballs. Never played with an actual ball.
esaym 11y ago
I plan on doing something like this for my kids as they get older. I already randomly watch open courseware type stuff offered from various universities and I've always noticed they have decent seeming English and Math sections too. So why not sit my kids in front of it too? I don't think anyone is really happy with public schools these days. I object because of a Christian background. Yet my non-church going (atheist?) in-laws asked me once about "non-religious" based home school programs for their kids since they knew I would be home schooling. I really had no idea what to tell them.
smanzer 11y ago
I did my bachelor's from ages 14-18; there's some things that you can't really do (frat parties) but most of the social opportunities are open to you. It helps to make friends if you are in a group-centric major - I was a chemist, so lots of long hours in the lab with cool people. There's been some questions about whether the parents push too hard in these sorts of cases; for me, I was definitely motivated more by my own desire to get out in the world and start getting real things done. This isn't always a productive desire - I wish I'd taken the time to learn more about the stuff that grew to interest me later (math/CS), instead of blitzing through all my chem requirements. I guess for other people doing the same thing the only advice I'd have is that while the cliche is that life is short, it's really longer than you think it is at that age and you shouldn't feel like you need to rush in order to maintain a position in some sort of race. It's not bad to progress fast, just make sure it isn't at the expense of finding what you really love to do.
stared 11y ago
I envy this guy so much! I felt delayed by school, which offered slow-paced, and uninspiring environment (learning interesting stuff on my own, after the lessons; at ~15 I started reading academic textbooks in physics and chemistry). Right now I am very much for adjusting education to students, rather than the other way around (without expecting that everyone gets magically enlightened at the age of 18-19). Especially as the cohort-based learning is a direct heritage of the Prussian education (for teaching soldiers, not - scientists or engineers).
iconjack 11y ago
I'd be willing to bet that Rungta watched and consumed with great joy Walter Lewin's Physics 8.01 videos. I'd further bet that he mentioned them in this interview with MIT News, only to have his comments omitted from the piece, because Lewin is, in MIT's eyes, persona non grata. Of course this is just conjecture. I just said I'd be willing to take the bet.
sireat 11y ago
Even with all the positive support from parents this kid is an extreme outlier. Terrence Tao supposedly knew numbers from Sesame Street at age 2, but I do not know of any avid kid readers at age 2. I know plenty of kids ages 3-4 who know the alphabet but none are actual readers. In fact I know plenty of kids who "read" a book at age 3, but they are not reading the way we adults are they are imitating the reading process. Anecdotally I was a relatively early reader at age 5 (reading whole scary Grimm's tales) but my mom keeps insisting it was age 3 when I know it was not. So if he really was reading at age 2 and half that is showing advanced potential.

416 points by badboyboyce 11y ago

sopooneo 11y ago

To me, this exemplifies the true potential of online education: not to lift the masses, but to enable the geniuses.

thewarrior 11y ago
Well Ramanujan only needed one textbook to enable him. The tru e potential is in allowing everyone to get atleast a momentary ,fleeting glimpse of the worlds that the geniuses have opened up for us.

dagw 11y ago

It would be interested to check in with him at 35 to see where he ended up compared to other 'normal' 35 year old MIT grads. Basically does pushing your kid like that from such and early age lead to any significant long term advantages.

jasode 11y ago
>pushing your kid like that I dunno about this... we're not intimate with his family so it seems a little unfair to characterize his parents as "pushing him". For all we know, the opposite may have happened and his parents were "holding him back" and trying to prevent a precocious teen from rushing into MIT at age 14 instead of 15. As far as the article's text reveals, it says his parents were responsive and not pushy: "Rungta is grateful to his parents and to MIT for being responsive to his needs every step of the way."
- suby 11y ago
  I think that scenario is unlikely given the fact that they started the MIT preparation at 5.
  - marrs 11y ago
    I love how you think you can deduce that after reading a couple of paragraphs of an MIT article.
- evook 11y ago
  Yeah for sure... I attended a school for gifted kids. Those who where a lot younger than the rest of us where always pushed by their parents and their parents always told they where not pushing. And that is a first hand experience watching 42 gifted smart young children pushed in our education system and over their interessents on behalf of their parents. I attended this school for 6 years. It was a pain, and as if school wasn't boring enough ( school is mandatory where I live ) you had to consider every word you wanted to say as a 16/17/18 year old when there where 9/10/11 year old depressed and ADHDish, but extremely smart kids around you the whole time. In the end I am a hundred percent sure every kid can study MIT classes at every age. Most of the stuff is rational trivia. Also beeing gifted has nothing to do with your grades or your ability to follow classes or lectures. Because that's something your parents could've pushed on you, but for sure you are allowed to be happy that they didn't.
  - ww2 11y ago
    "Most of the stuff is rational trivia" --- rational trivia, I like the word.
    - evook 11y ago
      I don't know if you're beeing sarcastic or not. If so, excuse me please. Anyway you are probably right. I am still not sure about that phrasing. What I wanted to refer to, is that the Stuff you get teached at MIT still isn't any harder or easier than the stuff you can read or maybe already have read in books anyway. When I started college my profs where constantly referring to Tanenbaum, Dijkstra and co. Texts I have read and understood 5 years before I finished school.
      - jnbiche 11y ago
        Perhaps you shouldn't extrapolate your experience to that of students at MIT (or other universities outside of your country you've not attended, for that matter)? I'm in the U.S., and I can tell you that having gone to a good, but regular state university for undergrad, and then to much more prestigious university for grad school, the difference between the two was striking. I went from being one of the smarter students in the class, to one of the least smart (or at best, the middle). I expected this university to be better, but it was quite a shock just how much better it was. Is it possible that what they teach at MIT might go beyond the "trivia" or rote memorization that you describe being taught at your country's schools?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- draven 11y ago
  It seems he has a passion for learning (at the end of the article): "As he ponders declaring a major next year, Rungta pauses for a moment, and then he lights up. “In an ideal world, I would want to major in everything.”"
- rogeryu 11y ago
  > As far as the article's text reveals, it says his parents were responsive and not pushy: "Rungta is grateful to his parents and to MIT for being responsive to his needs every step of the way." Sure, he will never say bad things about his parents, especially not in the media. He's from India! As I see it parents (in general) can bend things so that children do not want anything else than what their parents want. This is not to blame the parents - they probably don't know better. From this story I can't tell what is the case. His parents are maybe the best ever, that not only want best for their kid, but actually let him find out what that is.
lugus35 11y ago
THIS IS YOUR EDUCATION, THIS IS YOUR SALARY ! $50K! ! ** ! ** * $40K! ** * Any Questions? ! ** * ! ***** * $30K! **** * ! **** * ! ***** * $20K! ***** * ! ***** * ! *** * $10K! *** * !** * ! * 0 +--------+----------+-----------+------------+---------+--*---------> no high some Bachelor's Master's Doctor high school college Degree Degree of school diploma Philosophy diploma http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/ http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/
- sp332 11y ago
  http://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t05.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t05.htm
- balls187 11y ago
  For a long while, his site was a top google result when searching for photography tips.
auvi 11y ago
Considering the average age of MIT freshman students is 18 years, he'll be starting with other teenagers. I hope that the 3 years difference will not prevent him from having a meaningful social life there. I think that branding him as a "child prodigy" just because he is one will help much. Instead I would like to see news like "Young MIT student has solved such and such hard problem for all mankind".
untilHellbanned 11y ago
no it will not.

huac 11y ago

Their restaurant (Cafe Spice @ MIT) is pretty good!

linuxkerneldev 11y ago
That was the first question I was curious about. Secondly, which dish is their specialty...

allendoerfer 11y ago

As long as he did not exclusively learn technical stuff but also got a humanistic education, which we do not know, and enjoyed his childhood, which I think he did, because you cannot perform like that without enjoying it, I think this is pretty amazing parenting. You could find other reasons to nitpick (Did he do sports? Did he develop social competences by interacting with other kids?), but even if these things are true, which we do not know, there are children, who got a regular education, that are still lacking in these regards and they are not enrolled at MIT at 15.

_lce0 11y ago
> Did he do sports? Did he develop social competences by interacting with other kids? Completely agree with you. He has the rest of his life to get better at those areas
codingdave 11y ago
I'm not even sure it matters how broad his education was, if (as you said) he has been happy with his life, but also as long as he is adaptable enough to switch directions if he becomes unhappy with his direction later in life. Many of us old folk change direction over the years. The key to a happy life in the long run is not to know everything when you are young, or to have picked the right direction from the start, but to recognize when your direction is no longer fulfilling, and to know when and how to change when you are old.
- allendoerfer 11y ago
  I think a basic understanding of history, culture and how our society works is absolutely required. I think it is our responsibility to prevent at least the worst mistakes we did in the past and preserve at least the best achievements. We have turned in circles in the past and will do it again if we do not get that we turned in circles.
  - stuxnet79 11y ago
    Not a truism for everyone. The history, culture, and society I learned in school was too Eurocentric / Western and was completely irrelevant to my personal development and sense of identity as a minority in this society.

littletimmy 11y ago

I don't know man, I think there's something to be said about having a childhood. Being from India myself, I know the tremendous pressure parents put on kids to succeed. I hope that this kid wasn't subject to the same.

Spearchucker 11y ago
Agree with you. My wife and I are already arguing over the future of our 3-year-old. She wants him to learn to read and write. I want him to play, have time to be a boy, get in trouble, kiss a girl, and have a care-free childhood. We're so obsessed with money, and forget all about the one currency that really matters. Time. Time to live. I'd rather he were average academically, and experience life exceptionally.
- DanBC 11y ago
  You can combine the two. Paint letters onto toy cars, paint a car park with letters in the spaces. Or paint letters onto rocks, and use a toy dump truck to load them up and move them around. Use synthetic phonics and sound out the letters when the cars are parked or the rocks are collected. (but in general I agree with you)
- lmm 11y ago
  I "had a childhood" in the sense of going to high school. It damn near killed me, and quite possibly would have if I hadn't been fortunate enough to skip a year, or to do a few university-like courses. I look back on those wasted, miserable years and wish I'd had other options - or thought to seize them for myself. Talk to your child, see what he actually likes. Make sure he knows that he always has a choice - years later my parents told me they thought about homeschooling but didn't think they knew enough to, and couldn't afford a tutor, but they never even mentioned these thoughts to me at the time.
- jazzyk 11y ago
  Up-voted for courageously (and beautifully) expressing a potentially unpopular opinion. Stay strong - it is hard not to feel guilty when other kids in kindergarten can seemingly write essays and do calculus, but in the end, it does not matter as much as it may appear to. And sometimes putting so much pressure may have unintended consequences. I know a few kids from affluent families in my town where their "early prodigies" are now college drop-outs.

erebus_rex 11y ago

Some commenters are afraid this kid was pushed way too hard and did not have time to learn proper social skills, play sports, get a holistic education in the humanities. This all might be true but the article makes it very clear how precocious this kid is. I don't think his parents were trying to push him. If anything they seemed to struggle to get him the things that he needed to succeed. Some people are just so laser focused on their desires that you just have to let them do their thing. I'm sure if he wants to play sports or learn history, he'll excel at it too.

agumonkey 11y ago
If that's all his desires then good for him. I hope he doesn't corner himself too much and experience other parts of life nonetheless. Very important.
papapra 11y ago
"I'm sure if he wants to play sports or learn history, he'll excel at it too." I'm not so sure about that, maybe it depends how you see excel

ucaetano 11y ago

And then people wonder why there's a teenager suicide epidemic in Palo Alto and Silicon Valley in general...

jnwrd 11y ago
The problem is mostly that parents and teachers have expectations for students beyond what most of them are intellectually capable of. There is also an excessive emphasis on empty credentialism. Both problems could be tempered via a recognition that people are not blank slates, some people like Ahaan are simply smarter than others, and the average high schooler should not be compared against him.
thearn4 11y ago
I think most people have a hometown that, even if they leave, always know they can go back to and make a simple life for themselves. I can imagine it being hard to grow up in a place where you have a pretty reasonable expectation of never being able to return to and live in on your own terms, unless you manage to stay the top 1% of the 1%.

rtl49 11y ago

“I will never forget the feeling of walking into the lobby of Building 7, looking up, and then touching the pillars to see if they were real. I couldn’t believe I was at MIT. My life and my ambitions moved to another level at that moment.” I think this impressive achievement is more a testament to the role that aspirations acquired during childhood play in determining a person's success than it is a reflection of this young man's intelligence. Yes, the latter is necessary, but it isn't sufficient. I have little doubt that there are many 18 year olds entering MIT's class of 2019 who could have entered at 15 had they been provided a similarly advantageous upbringing. These stories attract the attention of some of us because we wish we had been raised similarly. Had we not devoted our attention as children to, say, petty family turmoil or a hedonistic preoccupation with computer games, perhaps we would have progressed through life with a singularity of purpose and self-confidence that would have situated us in a better position today. We might have been spared years in our teens and twenties trying to find a sense of meaning in our work, unlike this fellow, who seems to have it figured out. I won't speculate about his social skills. I've met college students his age running the gamut from borderline autistic to social butterfly. Yes, the sense of "peerlessness" must be a bit alienating, but many of us have had this experience without leapfrogging high school.

collyw 11y ago
Personally I am pretty glad that I had a "normal" childhood.
- rtl49 11y ago
  I'm glad to hear it. Some of us have had neither a normal childhood, nor the perks of one dedicated to study. Thus my remark.
- hackerboos 11y ago
  When I was 5 years old I had trouble mixing up the letters b and d. Given an MIT course at that age I probably would have ignored it in favor of playing outside.
  - 11y ago

bitL 11y ago

I consider 4 years of my highschool a complete waste of time and would have loved to jump straight into a university right after elementary school. It would have been great to have OCW available at that time and not having to do everything myself including finding relevant books/sources. Good for Ahaan he escaped it and I wish him the very best of luck @ MIT!

eljimmy 11y ago
Out of curiousity, why did you find it such a waste?
- legohead 11y ago
  I felt the same as bitL. I was in PEAK (gifted and talented) since the second grade. When I started High School, one of my freshmen classes was biology. We started the year off learning about cells -- something I had learned about in 3rd grade PEAK and still remembered clearly. I was actually pissed off that I was not being taught something new. From that point on, I didn't give two shits about high school. I scraped by with Cs and played computer games until I graduated. I did start college a little early my senior year, using a program that let me take half the day off to attend college. But I could have easily been going to college since 9th grade. As for the social stuff, I actually lost most of my friends in HS -- they all moved to other states, and I had no desire to gain new friends (I had good friends on the internet, that I still have to this day, ~20 years later).
peter303 11y ago
I think I read the entire non fiction section of the local library to avoid my HS boredom. This was before the internet when you can find so much more online.

sakri 11y ago

"When Rungta turned 12, his family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, as his parents realized he needed to be in a more intellectually stimulating environment." My friends in Fort Lauderdale are gonna LOVE this!

michael_h 11y ago
Ft. Lauderdale has intellectually stimulating aspects, just not of the highly technical variety. The arts scene, however...

russnewcomer 11y ago

I applaud this family, and am glad for Ahaan's sake that he isn't just shipping himself off to college, but is going to still have his support structure. I was homeschooled, along with my two sisters, my entire educational career until college. We all started taking college classes early, my older sister correspondence at 14, my twin and I correspondence at 15. All of us took classes at local colleges before starting 'real college'. All of us scored high on our ACTs, all of us got scholarships to college. My parents didn't really push us, we were just smart. We had childhoods, I was a starter on the basketball team, and played college soccer for a year. I also read 10+ books a week, played way, way too much Civilization and Total Annihilation, and did plenty of volunteer work, especially at our local public access station. For my sisters, going to and living at 'real college' worked out well, they both succeeded in their own ways (my older sister graduated with two masters a few days after she turned 21, my twin sister received a lot of recognition from professionals in her field before graduating, was salutatorian, etc), whereas I didn't do so well being away from home and the support structure. I'm lazy, and I thought could just not do assignments I didn't want to and do well enough on other assignments to make up for it. Long story short, my GPA dropped enough to lose my scholarship, and I decided that the private college experience wasn't worth borrowing tens of thousands of dollars for. So I moved home, finished my bachelors from the state university in town. Snagged an internship and then got a job offer from that company, essentially during my junior year for a full time job, contingent on finishing school. My point in typing up this story is not to say that I am or was awesome. My point is that I am pretty sure that Ahaan Rungta is a pretty smart kid, his parents probably pushed him less than you think, and that as long as he and his family figure out how to navigate the maturity journey, he'll be fine.

rtl49 11y ago
>My point in typing up this story is not to say that I am or was awesome. Are you sure? Being a smart fellow, you must know that your experience is not evidence that this young man was not "pushed" too much and that he will "be fine." That said, my suspicion is that Rungta's early achievement is not cause for concern about his social development. Conducting research, for instance, is an intensely collaborative experience that he will probably have, and would provide ample opportunity for interacting with people of many ages. He probably will be fine.

ktzar 11y ago

Some people force maturing, when maturing comes on its own... And by doing so they loose childhood, which never comes back.

NameNickHN 11y ago
Some people mature earlier than others without being foced. For some the ideal childhood is playing outside, playng games or playing sports. For others it's technology and science.
- sklogic 11y ago
  Exactly. Tinkering with things is not any different from any other games children play.

mkj 11y ago

"two-year-old son — already an avid reader" sounds somewhat unusual?

NameNickHN 11y ago
There are people who have a hard time learning to read and some who never manage it despite making every effort. Why is it so hard to believe that there are people at the other end of the spectrum who are able to learn to read as an infant?
- nibnib 11y ago
  This isn't normally distributed. Would you find someone learning to feed at 18 as surprising as someone learning at a week old? Reading at this age is certainly unusual.
  - NameNickHN 11y ago
    Normal? No, but neither surprising.
- mkj 11y ago
  No, I'm not saying it's unbelievable. More that some of the comments here seem to be assuming that the kid was just pushed quite hard, but there seems to be more to it.
rachelandrew 11y ago
According to my parents I could read at age 3, I can certainly remember petitioning my father to be allowed to read The Hobbit when I was 5. My mother got into trouble when I started school because the teachers didn't know what to do with a 5 year old who could read and write! I was taught by the "look and say" method, now not used in British schools at least. They teach phonics now. Interestingly my daughter is dyslexic and struggled horribly in school to learn by the phonics method. It was when I started teaching her the old fashioned way that she picked it up.
- 11y ago

Chrossler 11y ago

We are unable to judge anything about this kid. The article is written by the school and has a happy fairy tale feel to it, as a school article should. It is inspiring and interesting and gives you a thirst for intelligence. I hope the kid kills it and doesn't end up like phaedrus... I'm sure he'll do awesome

eddotman 11y ago

I've hung out with Ahaan at school several times -- some people in the comments here are speculating that going to university this young might make it hard to adjust (socially), but honestly I assumed he was like ~20 (i.e. just like any other college-age dude). I had no clue he had such a neat backstory of how he got to MIT!

erroneousfunk 11y ago
Yeah, there was a guy at my alma mater (Olin College of Engineering) who entered at 14 or 15. He was perfectly normal and well-adjusted. I mean, it was a weird cloistered tech school environment, so "normal" and "well-adjusted" are relative here, but I also didn't realize he was so young until he mentioned it. I mean, sure, you get the occasional Ted Kaczynski, but the vast majority of kids I've heard of entering college early seem well-adjusted.
- linuxkerneldev 11y ago
  > you get the occasional Ted Kaczynski Occasional? Ted was one of a kind. And apparently, you don't "get" someone like him. Allegedly, rather, you "make" that kind of person through government sponsored psychological torture experiments. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard-and-the-making-of-the-unabomber/378239/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard-...
  - erroneousfunk 11y ago
    Yes, I was being a little glib when I said that. That's, unfortunately, who a lot of people automatically jump to when they think of "maladjusted precocious children/young adults" I think there was a RadioLab episode about him as well?
- skiphs 11y ago
  A better example for this crowd would be Hans Reiser, who skipped high school and went straight to UC Berkeley.
11y ago

wodenokoto 11y ago

I just don't understand how a 5 year old can comprehend a college level course. How does he know enough math to follow along any scientific course? How can he be well enough versed in literature to follow along a liberal arts course, or history to comprehend a sociology course?

drcode 11y ago
Well, the first-level answer would be "work backwards"... ...as soon as you don't understand the math, google it, then keep doing that until you start understanding things (though this is probably more what a 7yo would do, not a 5yo)
yeukhon 11y ago
Maybe his IQ is higher than an average person? That would be my guess.
swiley 11y ago
The math will be a prerequisite so the university will handle making sure he has taken a high enough math. Honestly the hard part about college courses is motivation to study and do assignments not comprehension, so if he is motivated enough he'll do well.

gokhan 11y ago

If you're skeptical about pushing children towards their limits, here's another take by Derek Sivers: https://sivers.org/kimo https://sivers.org/kimo

NDizzle 11y ago

His parents are amazing. If he's like most 15 year olds he won't realize that, but when he will it'll be quite a moment. That took a lot of courage. Props.

sotojuan 11y ago

This is awesome. As someone who can't wait to graduate college so I can teach myself stuff through OCW (there's some irony there), I am glad it's available. It's a really great project.

PaulHoule 11y ago

This seems to have been drawn from the same statistical distribution of many stories that center around this idea that "MIT students are smarter than students anywhere." The ideology of MIT is that you should go to MIT daycare, then MIT kindergarten and all the way through to the PhD and beyond, and if they had enough people in that pipeline they wouldn't bother taking applications from anywhere else. That idea is definitely one of the things holding Boston back in terms of startups -- you definitely see research labs at MIT that don't hire postdocs from Stanford or Cornell because they only want to hire MIT people. There are plenty of MIT grads who are mediocre at best but many local startups (particularly those started by MIT grads) don't realize this and often make up all sorts of excuses about why things went wrong.

ultrafilter 11y ago
In contrast (but not contradiction) with your experience, as an MIT undergraduate math major applying for PhD programs, my advisor warned me that the math dept. doesn't admit their own graduates. I applied anyway and indeed was not admitted (which was fine since I was admitted to UW-Madison, where I most wanted to go).

jnwrd 11y ago

He seems to have tremendous breadth of curiosity, it will be interesting to see what he ultimately ends up specializing in. MIT is a big place, and trying to "major in everything" will almost certainly not turn out well.

ausjke 11y ago

The school system is really best for the kids-in-the-middle, i.e. not the best fit for the really talented, as the case with this MIT kid here, neither is it for the D/F students. Public school was originated in Europe for training workers if memory serves me right. Since Bush the public education system is more geared towards to the D/F students nonetheless, i.e., the no child left behind policy, a road to hell. This might have something to do with Bush, who is about a D student himself. A solution I would like to see, is tax-relief for home-schooling families, they don't use the public education system so why pay for the school district property tax? This looks like a win-win for the family and the nation in the long run. Human races compete and evolve, focusing on the left-behinders are so against nature, yes they should be taken care of, but the focus really should be on the other side.

allendoerfer 11y ago
> Public school was originated in Europe for training workers if memory serves me right. Actually, no. The idea is associated with Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightment and stuff like this. This was years before workers had to be educated. It was actually about humanism and liberty from the catholic church.

cognivore 11y ago

What I like is he came to America to go to MIT. That great mind is now an American mind, and with his family origin, I would hope a world thinking and sympathetic mind. Perhaps he can do good in this world.

Mimu 11y ago

So many people praising this brainwashing I can't even believe it. I'm ready for the downvote but please comment to why it is not the case. That's a pretty story but if their parents went on teaching him something else than physics everybody would go on their horses and scream for child abuse. What choice did the kid have? None. Dude didn't go out and was full MIT mode from the age of 5.

klogw 11y ago

I remember him from Brilliant.org, saw him solving problems there.

venuzr 11y ago

I find his drive and his parent's support commendable. Being someone who has not been homeschooled and does not know anyone who has, I am extremely curious about it. -How does one go about replicating this kind of success? Or even moderate success. In typical schools, you have some measure of whether your child is "succeeding". How does one go about doing the same for home-schooled children. -How do you go about providing the structure that schools provides towards increasingly complex material which will keep the child engaged and learning at the same time. Not having children myself but watching my brother's children, I can see that the structure provided for children is extremely important, even for simple things like when to have food, go to bed, practice music etc. Are there any good resources for raising home schooled children and providing structure?

stuxnet79 11y ago
Extremely important in what sense? What are the specific benefits you see to having a rigid structure? I have a little sister who is in my estimation smart, but spends every waking moment (when not in school or finishing up homework) on her iPad playing video games and watching Youtube videos. I sometimes wonder if a little bit of prodding on the part of my parents would help her find other hobbies. I personally feel like I suffered from my parent's laissez faire attitude.

biggio 11y ago

<blockquote>"elementary and secondary education from OpenCourseWare"</blockquote> How do you do that?

biggio 11y ago

How do you get "elementary and secondary education from OpenCourseWare"?

CrimsnBlade 11y ago

>Some people think I’m gifted, but I don’t think so Taking physics and chemistry classes at 5 years old? Call me crazy, but I think that can certainly be considered gifted by most standards.

oberstein 11y ago
Just another instance of dunning-kruger. When he's older and had more interactions with lower IQ people, he may come to terms with his gifts...

peter303 11y ago

MIT has always had a few of these "show pony" geniuses around. Two of them sadly committed suicide during my years at MIT. I dont know their minds, but I guess some of their sense of self worth was being a smart ass and marching to to a different drummer. When you are surrounded by thousands almost as smart as you you dont really stand out for being you anymore. MIT people are impresses by you doing something really clever. Also I suspect these guys were very lonely too. I hope Adaan has a sense of self worth built on more than being at MIT.

jonesb6 11y ago

The main argument for why this ok seems to be: "Children are able to learn more, therefore any obsessively accelerated curriculum is justified even if it detracts from other aspects of child hood" Um, I think that's just an excuse for not learning as an adult and pushing your own failed dreams on your offspring.

hemantv 11y ago

On a side note, I am very curious how family immigrate to US. From what I know there is no good path as Indian to immigrate legally. Green card has 6 - 12 years of wait.

rchaud 11y ago
I have 3 friends from Bangladesh whose parents received their US green cards in 2000, 2002 and 2003. They had all applied for them in the early 1990s. I rarely hear of this happening anymore, so I imagine the process was more straightforward back then.

antidaily 11y ago

Virgin at 35.

oberstein 11y ago
But magic powers at 30.
aidenn0 11y ago
I doubt it. The Massachusetts age of consent is 16, so there's no legal barriers by his Sophomore year. I haven't been to MIT but, for the college campuses I'm familiar with, it's harder to avoid getting laid than it is to get laid.

free2rhyme214 11y ago

I wonder what he does after school. Impressive accomplishment! That's a lot of focus for a kid.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

Children can do a lot more than they're given credit for. My 4-year-old demanded music lessons when his older brother was playing cello. He started on both cello and piano. Entering kindergarden, in music class the teacher had a keyboard, asked the children who could play. A little girl banged out chopsticks. Another little boy picked out twinkle,twinkle,little star. My son Andrew raised his hand, and played some Beethoven sonata. The teacher asked him if he knew what that was. He told her. He's not a prodigy. Has terrible handwriting! The 1st-grade evaluation suggested he had fine-motor issues. Yet he could play 64th-note runs on the piano endlessly. Its all because of regular teaching and fun practicing. Kids can learn what they put their minds to. But it takes 10,000 hours not only from the pupil but from the tutor. My wife put in the time; Andrew plays wonderfully.

MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
Fun fact: terrible handwriting is correlated with high dopamine levels in the brain, which is correlated with increased brain activity (~ intelligence).
- Omnipresent 11y ago
  Any link for additional reading on that fun fact?
- amarpatel 11y ago
  starts writing poorly on purpose
- plcancel 11y ago
  Albert, watch your kerning! This is far too legible. http://www.fastcodesign.com/3045994/albert-einsteins-handwriting-is-now-a-font http://www.fastcodesign.com/3045994/albert-einsteins-handwri...

ChuckMcM 11y ago

I think this was a great story and I hope to hear more like it. It has been one of the "promises" of the Internet that smart children could get access to as much learning as they can handle, breaking the bottleneck that was the availability of local resources. Of course not everyone cares, or wants to learn all they can, but for those who do it is important to give them that opportunity. And it is in that context that I think the availability of course ware will help us guide smart, motivated, kids before their boredom leads them into an ill advised adventure.

n7c3c1 11y ago

reads article about unbelievably driven and hard working young person watches video of American students at Yale yelling about safe spaces o_o

wuschel 11y ago

Truly impressive accomplishment. My congratulations. And now imagine that you actually do not need MIT. In comparison to what you have done, it is another rigid institution with a more or less rigid structure. I hope the educational landscape will keep changing, giving more alternative bodies to aquire high end knowledge, e.g. through hacker spaces, virtual/internet based platforms, etc.

whatsup 11y ago

Tortoise wins the race.

samstave 11y ago

I'd love to see a list of the order in which each class was provided to the child.

sawthat 11y ago

Don't know this kid, or this situation, but to commenters here who seem envious, or young people who are inspired: being a child prodigy expires at age 25. Being known for your youth means that once you aren't young anymore you've lost that. If your identity is wrapped up in being precocious be ready with a second plan.

stared 11y ago
I don't know how many miss "being known". I think many regret not having so much intellectual stimulation, or opportunities to learn. (Seriously, how many of us, the HN crowd, considered their Primary School intellectually challenging?)

droopybuns 11y ago

I would love some guidance on how to take advantage of OCW w/ my kids. I don't want to reproduce Ahaan's story. My father was a biology teacher and always had tons of text books we could just kind of grind through growing up. I'm not doing the same for my kids at this time- mostly for lack of resources. Just skimming through the OCM content- I don't see material in physics or science that can be used to introduce kids to the scientific method. It mostly looks like baptism by fire. Any tips?

eddotman 11y ago
If OCW is too advanced to start, try Khan Academy first. It's great for K-12 material.

umutisik 11y ago

It is better for the kids to praised about what they are doing rather than what they are getting. Personally, I don't care what prestigious thing he got. This kid is amazing for having studied so many things on his own. The real aim here should be to be engaged and to be learning; which are things this kid seems to be have done plenty of. It is so cool that we now have all these learning resources accessible easily. It's interesting how this kind of thing makes one think about their own life. I went to a talk by a computer scientist yesterday. He is studying cryptography. You could tell that he was so engaged, getting so much joy from his subject. People were interested in what he was explaining. You could tell that he is just loving every minute of his job. This is the kind of engagement level I am looking for. And by the way, I don't think one needs to be top-level at what they do to get there.

chris_va 11y ago

I went to college early (14, graduated 18). I've spoken with a lot of similar folks over the years, and the biggest takeaway for me was that everyone's experience and needs were different. Some people were pushed by their parents, but mostly it was people who were bored with the normal experience and found an out. Out of that set, maybe about half regret it, and wished they had slowed down and enjoyed high school/childhood more. People tend to assume that folks who go to college early would be socially awkward, but that was not my experience. The social/emotional intelligence distribution was pretty normal. Out of everything, the common denominator was supportive parents.

hedgehog 11y ago
My observations are similar, the kids have to want to do the work and it's hard enough that parental support is essential. It's too hard otherwise. The University of Washington has a program that brings in 12ish early entrants each year. The program's process seems to be repeatable and although the staff have a strong liberal arts bent they produce students in all fields including at least two YC founders.
caseysoftware 11y ago
I started early but was dual-enrolled during high school. It was kind of the best of both worlds and limited some of the trouble/boredom I had. Anyway, supportive (or desperate) parents are a key aspect.
wahsd 11y ago
What do you mean by "supportive parents"? I think that eludes some. You can be supportive without really being helpful. Can anyone provide some context as to what that support looked like?
- Klinky 11y ago
  Not being destructive, to start with. Providing a stable environment. Being aware of the options available in life and having the resources to take advantage of them. A true desire to see your child succeed and find themselves, rather than using them to fulfill your purpose or goals. Showing them the success and happiness your own life brings you.

benlower 11y ago

Sees the world in buckyballs. Never played with an actual ball.

esaym 11y ago

I plan on doing something like this for my kids as they get older. I already randomly watch open courseware type stuff offered from various universities and I've always noticed they have decent seeming English and Math sections too. So why not sit my kids in front of it too? I don't think anyone is really happy with public schools these days. I object because of a Christian background. Yet my non-church going (atheist?) in-laws asked me once about "non-religious" based home school programs for their kids since they knew I would be home schooling. I really had no idea what to tell them.

smanzer 11y ago

I did my bachelor's from ages 14-18; there's some things that you can't really do (frat parties) but most of the social opportunities are open to you. It helps to make friends if you are in a group-centric major - I was a chemist, so lots of long hours in the lab with cool people. There's been some questions about whether the parents push too hard in these sorts of cases; for me, I was definitely motivated more by my own desire to get out in the world and start getting real things done. This isn't always a productive desire - I wish I'd taken the time to learn more about the stuff that grew to interest me later (math/CS), instead of blitzing through all my chem requirements. I guess for other people doing the same thing the only advice I'd have is that while the cliche is that life is short, it's really longer than you think it is at that age and you shouldn't feel like you need to rush in order to maintain a position in some sort of race. It's not bad to progress fast, just make sure it isn't at the expense of finding what you really love to do.

stared 11y ago

I envy this guy so much! I felt delayed by school, which offered slow-paced, and uninspiring environment (learning interesting stuff on my own, after the lessons; at ~15 I started reading academic textbooks in physics and chemistry). Right now I am very much for adjusting education to students, rather than the other way around (without expecting that everyone gets magically enlightened at the age of 18-19). Especially as the cohort-based learning is a direct heritage of the Prussian education (for teaching soldiers, not - scientists or engineers).

iconjack 11y ago

I'd be willing to bet that Rungta watched and consumed with great joy Walter Lewin's Physics 8.01 videos. I'd further bet that he mentioned them in this interview with MIT News, only to have his comments omitted from the piece, because Lewin is, in MIT's eyes, persona non grata. Of course this is just conjecture. I just said I'd be willing to take the bet.

sireat 11y ago

Even with all the positive support from parents this kid is an extreme outlier. Terrence Tao supposedly knew numbers from Sesame Street at age 2, but I do not know of any avid kid readers at age 2. I know plenty of kids ages 3-4 who know the alphabet but none are actual readers. In fact I know plenty of kids who "read" a book at age 3, but they are not reading the way we adults are they are imitating the reading process. Anecdotally I was a relatively early reader at age 5 (reading whole scary Grimm's tales) but my mom keeps insisting it was age 3 when I know it was not. So if he really was reading at age 2 and half that is showing advanced potential.