mswen

Will graduate from High School this spring with about 70 credits from Community College. Already accepted into college of science and engineering at local Big 10 University for next fall. We know that they have a good history of accepting these CC credits. He has math up through multi-variable calculus, chem I, physics I & II, liberal arts general classes pretty much done.

He has been in robotics - combat initially and VEX last few years.

Finished one semester intro to computer science, says that he gets binary and hexadecimal counting systems, did a lot of pseudo code with that class and is now teaching himself C++ because that is what is required for the computer engineering degree. I got him started on Project Euler as a way to give him specific problems to solve using C++ and give him a way to measure progress.

So far none of these seem to have really challenged him. He faithfully attends class, takes sparse to okay notes and studying for a major test consists of an hour or so of browsing back through notes and reworking a couple of problems for math and physics and less if it is a liberal arts class - maintaining 4.0 without much effort while taking the hardest classes available.

I suspect that there are a number of people here on HN that were very much like him as a high school senior.

What would you suggest as ways to challenge him?

Suggestions for summer job - he did some construction grunt work a couple summers ago, then tutored math last summer.

If you were like him at that age what might you do different? Or, what was really engaging that might not be obvious?

Thanks