Reply to Tech Prodigy and College Choices: Balancing Advanced Skills with Less Prestigious Schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm looking for some advice about my 15-year-old son. Up until 8th grade, he excelled in advanced courses, always getting top grades. But something changed in high school – he stopped taking all honors and advanced classes and switched to regular ones. Despite this shift, he's still acing standardized tests, scoring around 1550 on SAT practice tests with ease. His regular school grades are a mix, with As, Bs, and occasional Cs, particularly in subjects like foreign languages that don't interest him.

He's now looking at colleges that are easier to get into, focusing on those with good Computer Science programs. His list includes Iowa State, George Mason University, Arizona State, University of Arizona, and Oregon State. He doesn't care about the school and just wants to get a CS degree.

Here’s where it gets impressive: his tech skills are extraordinary. Beyond basic coding, he’s adept at creating complex software solutions. He’s skilled in a wide array of programming languages and technologies, including Docker, JavaScript frameworks, Python, Java, C++, and more. He has an amazing ability to grasp and master new tech concepts, languages, and frameworks quickly. In my role as a senior director and hiring manager at a FAANG company, I see that his skills are comparable to those of our seasoned principal engineers and architects. He’s tackled challenging coding tasks and aced the tough coding tests we set for hiring these high-level positions.

Here's the part that irks me a bit: I talk to friends who have older kids and are just starting to learn programming at Ivy League schools, and it's hard not to feel that my son, who is far more advanced in tech, won't have the same prestigious college on his resume. This makes me wonder how important is a prestigious university for him. He’s incredibly talented in tech but isn’t pursuing challenging academic courses anymore. Should I push him towards more renowned universities, or is it okay to support his choice of more accessible colleges, given his exceptional skills? Will his advanced abilities in tech get recognized in the industry, even if he doesn’t graduate from a highly sought-after school?[/quote]

I have a VERY hard time believing your work at a FAANG.  If you did you would immediably relize your child is employable now and pertige does not matter. Or maybe this is why you work at a FAANG and not a MATANA.[/quote]

Ehhh. I mean, this is true, but my husband has worked for Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. And the students who he has had as interns have all been from some pretty good colleges. That is different than getting a job  straight out of college, but those students are guaranteed jobs after they graduate (at least they were....not sure about now with all the hiring freezes).[/quote]

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