Chris Dixon’s recent post about a buddy who got into MIT without a high school diploma reminded me of when I applied to college without a high school degree and got rejected everywhere I applied.

My sophomore year in high school my buddy Kevin wrote in English class about how Phineas and Gene in A Separate Peace were gay lovers.  You just don’t do that in one of the most conservative towns in Texas.  During a presentation by some local lawyers on Twelve Angry Men, I wrote on a sample jury form that my name was Poop Face and that I worked for Satan.  I showed up at class the next day which was empty except for my teacher and her shit-eating grin.  I got kicked out of English for a week.

Junior year I nearly failed English, Chemistry, and French.  I threw a pen at my French teacher in class one day and made her cry.  I failed my French AP test and got a 1 — the lowest possible score — on my Economics AP test. I’ve never met another person who’s gotten a 1 on an AP test.

My parents were the kind to get apoplectic at A minuses much less Cs and Ds with some Fs sprinkled in.  Lots of yelling and gnashing of teeth.

I worked out my escape: go to college now, far far away.  I found out that Caltech and Carnegie Mellon both accepted kids without high school diplomas.  I never considered MIT because I always imagined that it was a school full of ugly girls.  Astute, really, although that doesn’t explain why I applied to Caltech.  I guess it was only much later that I even met a girl from Caltech. 

While I was totally dysfunctional in high school, I always felt on the inside like I was quite capable and that I wasn’t a loser at life.  Ya know, in high school, you see dudes who hang out with nerds and don’t make good grades — and many of those kids are really smart.  Then they’re the kids who hang out with nerds, don’t make good grades, and are actually pretty dumb.  I was pretty sure I didn’t fall into the last group.

I had nearly flunked out of high school, but at the same time, I had taken a bunch of college math coursework at the local university.  I took calculus, algebra, analysis, topology, and a few other courses at Texas A&M and had done well.  At 16, I tutored college kids in differential equations, graded papers for linear algebra, and took a fancy reading course for advanced undergrads. 

I didn’t think I had much of a chance at Caltech.  And I got rejected.  But I was pretty sure I was going to get into CMU based on standardized test scores and my math skillz.  I remember the morning I dialed into my internet connection, waited, waited, waited, and then pulled up the screen to see if I’d gotten in.  And it was more rejection.

In retrospect, it was a really bad decision to write my personal statement about Starcraft.  I imagine with a candidate like me, the question of maturity is first and foremost in their heads and nothing I could say about my mastery of Zerg would help change their mind on that point.  Yes, I even pointed out how I had sick macro and that I had exhibited mad 2v2 leadership abilities.

This story has a conventional ending.  I had a fun senior year with further social acculturation.  I applied to college with a high school diploma and got in.  I’m a normal human.