[the7nd]

The reason you see so many entrepreneurs come out of IMSA is that the students realize they can learn anything. You see the guy across from you ace a test or finish an assignment faster than you thought was possible. You know you are as good as your peers so you push yourself to reach that level.

Once you accomplish everything the school gives you, you want more. You think of new ideas and no longer constrain yourself to what is given to you. This is just one dynamic that happens here. A lot happens when you tell the most driven and brightest to "advance the human condition".

[jrock08]

This is something that I'm uniquely qualified to comment on.

I am an IMSA alum who was by and large, a below average IMSA student during my first two years. However, I learned a lot just by being exposed to my very smart classmates. Eventually, in my senior year I matured and started to work harder and got good grades. Had I stayed at my original high school I would have skated through at the top of my classes without much adversity. Then, based on the average college dropout rate of students from my original high school, I would have faced adversity in college and not know what to do. IMSA is a big part of why I am where I am today.

[simmons]

This rings true. Many of us start out with very limiting notions of what's possible, and there's nothing like surrounding yourself with bright people to expand the envelope of what seems to be possible.

I attended a school very similar school to IMSA in the early 90's (the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science), and it was probably the best thing that could have happened to me at that age. I had a pen pal at IMSA who, like me, was sys-admining the school's UNIX server, so it was fun to trade notes. I had plenty of other experiences later in life that expanded my notion of the possible, but attending that school certainly got me on the right path.