Well this is awkward. I’m currently a 22 year old software engineer who dropped out of community college to pursue software engineering. I’ve worked at BIG brand names – 1 year of experience at Flexport (800MM valuation when I joined, 3 bil today), 0.5 years into working at Facebook; and I’ve got an incredible open source portfolio and online brand.
After acquiring the taste of being massively successful in my career (I’ll be making well over 250k this year), I’ve come to realize that while being successful is great, I’ve missed out on the whole college experience, and that I should probably go back before I get too old.
Before I dropped out I was pursing a dual degree in mathematics and physics at a community college with the intention of transferring to a UC. Basically, that all feel apart once I acquired the taste of money after I landed a swe consulting gig (theres a clear downward trend in my collegiate gpa).
Starting afresh, I’m interested in pursing a degree in Philosophy and a range of classes spanning the entire spectrum of math, physics, and economics. I’m primarily interested in Brown due to their lax grade policies – I’m not interested in the rat race of getting good grades as you’ll see in my below stats.
Anyway College Confidential: I know I’m pretty exceptional, but… chance me if you can!
Stats:
Highschool
SAT: 2220
GPA: probably around a 3.4 weighted
Hella AP credits
College
GPA: 2.9 (pretty much straight As and B+s. Low GPA is due to forgetting to drop classes lul. It’s more like 3.7 without the Fs and Ds)
Extracurriculars:
Extensive Software engineering career at Silicon Valley based companies (3 years)
Maintain an open source project with 500 stars and 100k daily downloads
Can speak Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish fluently
98% percentile competitive programmer on a programming website.
Can you say more about what you feel that you have ‘missed out’ on, and what you would expect going to college at 23/24 would be like?
I am a big fan of fresh starts, and have taught many ‘mature students’ (as students of your age are politely referred to). The big success differentiator is how strong a ‘why’ the student has, and how realistic they are about the what the experience will be.
In the off chance that this is a legitimate post by a person with hella AP credits, who is massively successful and knows he (I assume) is pretty exceptional, I’ll bite. But I’ll also flag, in the event that this entertaining post is simply a clever advertisement in disguise.
Colleges won’t care about your SAT score. You’re a transfer applicant and have been out of high school for many years with plenty of work experience.
There are other colleges that have an open curriculum such as Brown. I somehow don’t think they are going to be wowed by your desire to attend being due to their “lax” grading policies.
Now I’ll stop biting. I am hella certain this isn’t legit.
Software engineers in SV making $250k (in total compensation that include salary+bonus+stock) is not unusual. If this is someone with 2-3 years experience working in a FAANG company - its very possible.
To the naysayers: Yes this post is legit. I’m seriously investing in going back to school for after I’ve vested my shares in half a year. I’ll be just turning 23 by then. @coolguy40: I’m an E4 engineer at FB https://www.levels.fyi/
Sure, I would say my two big reasons for going back are:
for the prestige: I’m not considering non-ivy league colleges
as a two - three year vacation – I intend to take advantage of college experience in both the social and academic sense.
As I said, I’m not really interested in “succeeding” in the traditional sense (GPA, clubs, etc). This is why Brown appeals to me in particular – I think it’s wonderful that Brown allows students to take all their classes pass / no pass, especially for my goals, and I intend to take full advantage of that. I’ve never had difficulties with academics anyway in my community college years and I majored hard STEM subjects (math and physics).
Don’t expect to be like the 18 year old freshmen on campus and have that same experience. There will be plenty of 23 year olds there too, but they may have moved on from the freshman experience of staying up all night drinking coffee and discussing page 23 of a certain book or thinking it is hysterically funny to drive an hour for the best ice cream EVER! You may have more money to spend on stuff than your classmates such as weekends in NYC or concert tickets.
College can still be fun, it just won’t be the same as if you had gone at 18.
I think Brown is more interested in non-traditional candidates who are, for example, combat veterans, than ones with lucrative careers who would like to attend as a prestigious vacation. Getting in as a transfer is highly competitive, so this will likely be a self-limiting initiative.
If you really want to have the Renaissance Person experience you describe, as a non-traditional student, apply to St. John’s College and do their Great Books curriculum. Distinguish yourself there and then get your Ivy League Cred in a masters program.
@xJavierXxLaffoe Based on Brown’s transfer program being for currently enrolled-in-good-standing at another institution college students, you probably have pretty close to zero chances of admissions as a “transfer” applicant.
There is another option: Brown has a Resumed Undergraduate Education (RUE) “designed for undergraduate applicants who have been out of high school for six years or more, and who have no more than two years of prior college experience. It is a full-time program which leads to a Brown University undergraduate degree”
You sound like a good candidate for Columbia GS- have you looked at it? .
Having worked between each of my degrees I get why going back to school feels like a vacation! But even with Pass/Fail at Brown you will have to work to get those passes, and my guess is that you won’t have to work any much harder to get a Brown pass than a Columbia B or C.
And I think it’s probably a little unrealistic to think that you might be done in 2 years. Brown doesn’t accept APs for credit, and it only accepts college transfer credits for courses that align with course that they offer. You won’t know how many of your old CC credits they will accept until after you are accepted.