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<p>Yes. I don’t think it’s too early for him to think about the possibilities and to learn his preferences. It was also an opportunity to visit family, and simply enjoy a father-son trip together. I don’t think it’s ridiculous to look at these schools and think about the differences. Someone gets in. Not everyone wins a Nobel Prize. The distinction between an institute and a university might inform other choices he will make. </p>
<p>I should add that he’s not a tinkerer, and wants to major in math (although he did build a computer so he can play resource intensive video games). 60 percent of MIT is engineering majors. He will be working with blackboards. I wonder how he will feel about that difference, and whether it would stretch him. </p>
<p>I’m not saying he will get into HYPMS, but, given his record, it’s not delusional for him to apply. </p>
<p>MIT required registration. Harvard, you just show up. Schools vary. Check their admission websites. Should I make anything out of the fact that Harvard doesn’t keep a record of attendees?</p>
<p>As for amount of required courses, it wasn’t the number of courses, but the restricted choice. At Harvard, you have to take one course from 8 areas, plus writing, and foreign languages. At MIT, any eight humanities classes plus two restricted STEM electives. No foreign language but I notice he could continue Latin. He joked that, in the spirit of MIT, he could build a time machine and study abroad in Ancient Rome. </p>
<p>Through his mother, he’s a Williams legacy, and she would love it if he went there. (I know, another easy one to get into.) Williams has laughably low course requirements, a great math department, and he’d be a good fit–might make the lax team as a walk-on plus play trombone in the scramble band. I went to grad school at Chicago, and he’s attracted there too, but Chicago has laughably high core requirements–so he would have to come to terms with that. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, he will be taking courses at Yale, starting this fall. (A tuition free perk of going to a New Haven public high school.) So, more grist for the mill. I’ve promised if he gets in and goes there, when I pass him on the street, I’ll pretend I don’t know him–and would still let him sneak his laundry home.</p>