<p>Who's the youngest freshman to have ever entered an Ivy? The oldest?
Or, who's the youngest/oldest that you know of?</p>
<p>The youngest and oldest freshmen I’ve met at Princeton were 16 and 28, respectively.</p>
<p>It is not terribly unusual to see 16 year olds (particularly those soon turning 17) at the Ivies. I think younger than that is very very unusual in recent years. Many decades ago Harvard accepted a young teen who had a very difficult time and became almost a street person afterward (would probably have been diagnosed with Aspergers or autism today), you can google to find that story, and for many many years Ivies took that as a lesson not to accept kids who are too young.</p>
<p>Thanks for the heads up Aniger.</p>
<p>I thought there were such things as super nerds, who were were born smart from a young age, and attend Ivies :embarrassed:, so maybe I am wrong.</p>
<p>There are such geniuses actually. I know one who was a 19 year old PhD student in Mathematics. I recall the bouncers at Cottage giving him a hard time “This prox is clearly fake. How can you be a graduate student when you’re not even 21?”</p>
<p>good times.</p>
<p>What was the 16 year old like?</p>
<p>@cometking</p>
<p>Colorful, to say the very least; when people found out that the 16-year-old was sixteen, the reaction was generally “Oh, figures.”</p>
<p>16 can happen if you skipped a couple grades in elementary school. At least that’s how the two 16-year-old college students I know went to college. How did the 28-year-old get to be a freshman? 10 gap years or applied late?</p>
<p>lol, PHD! But after reading a few posts from the featured discussions thrashing(a bit) on PhDs, I find them less worth the hassle, though I would like one ;)</p>
<p>So, how was that possible really?? Started college at 11!??!?! Took no vacations and just got over undergrad and grad over vacations?</p>
<p>Hmm, I believe it is possible to be 16 at college by skipping just one grade, which is pretty amazing nonetheless :)</p>
<p>@lullinatalk</p>
<p>He was an Olympic athlete who put off applying to college until after competing at Salt Lake City and Torino.</p>
<p>@studyzone</p>
<p>poobear87 was describing a 19-year-old PhD student, not someone who had completed their PhD by the age of 19.</p>
<p>@ray
I know, 11+4(undergrad)+4(grad)=19(start PhD). I believe it is the right calculation?</p>
<p>No. Probably more like 16+3 (undergrad, or 15+4) = 19 (start PhD). It is perfectly possible to start a PhD program directly out of college. Most people don’t do it that way, but it’s not rare at all, especially for a kid who may be something of a prodigy and is clearly headed for an academic career. Larry Summers, for example, was a PhD student at Harvard at 20, and a tenured faculty member there at 28. Kurt Godel, several generations before, received his PhD in mathematics at age 24.</p>
<p>@studyzone</p>
<p>Spending exactly four years in graduate school and then entering a PhD program sounds very unorthodox to me. </p>
<p>The only kind of non-PhD graduate programs I can think of that should take exactly 4 years are like medical and dentistry degrees, and once you graduate from those, you ought to be entering residencies, not becoming a PhD candidate.</p>
<p>I think starting that early is just wrong… Wouldn’t you feel like an outsider being so much younger than everyone else. Plus… Super geniuses tend to be lacking in the social department. Why set them back even more developmentally by starting at a younger age. I think you’d be missing out on a huge part of you life.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yup…I’ll be 16 when I enter college. (same scenario you just described, so it’s definitely possible).</p>
<p>Can anyone tell me the likelihood of meeting someone who is 16 in college? I’m a 15 year old senior in high school and I would like to meet someone my age, but everyone tells me it’s highly unlikely.</p>
<p>There’s a second-year grad student in the math department who is 18 or 19. Charles Fefferman and Terry Tao were done with their PhDs at 20 (and Fefferman was tenured at 22!). I never met anyone who’s 16 but it happens.</p>
<p>I haven’t met anyone who will be older than me for the Class of 2017 (23). I know a current senior who was a 25 year old freshman.</p>
<p>one of my teachers went to Princeton when she was 15</p>
<p>A couple hockey players I knew were in their 20s as freshmen… I think it’s some of them played minor-league hockey in Canada for a while before heading to college or something like that.</p>