[chx]

Tao got his PhD at the age of 21 and a tenured professor chair at the age of 24. To compare, at the age of 21 ordinary people only get their bachelors and typically it's 23-24 they when they get their masters degree. A PhD takes several more years and of course very few become tenured professors even more years later.

[pjmlp]

Depends on the country, before Bologna Portuguese degrees would be 5 years, so 23-24 would be the age of finalizing the degree, given that PhD without Msc wasn't possible back then, having everything done meant at least 30.

[n4r9]

In the other direction, in the UK it's quite possible to have your bachelors by 21, masters by 22 and PhD by 25. I had my mathematics PhD by 26 and am not a remarkable mathematician.

[alliao]

I'm sure you're remarkable enough congratulations for your hard work

[n4r9]

Not remarkable enough to land a post doc and stay in academia. But thank you :)

[poulpy123]

in france the age if you follow the traditional scholl schedule to have a phd is 26.

[NotYourLawyer]

Yeah but since he did all this in the USA, I’m not sure why that’s relevant.

[pjmlp]

It isn't, I was making the point university degrees aren't the same everywhere.

[malwrar]

Dumb question: how do people skip years like this in college. Like suppose you do know the material well already, does that just get recognized by the faculty at some point (you are noticed pre-college and get a faculty member interested in you? In college?) or would he have needed to specifically apply for that in some way?

I ask in jealousy, I felt like my college put as many administrative barriers as possible to ensure they got at least 4 years of tuition out of me. I’ve always wondered how people somehow managed to speedrun to the top like this, rather than just being bored by their classes (esp gen-ed classes ugh) until they reach top rank the normal way.

[waythenewsgoes]

He had a lot of acclaim as a young mathematician, according to Wikipedia he was taking college level math at 9 years of age. At this level of talent I believe you begin to be courted by top universities similar to D1 athlete's, not only that, but you are likely genius-level smart, so sticking you in a classroom of people your age would be doing you an intellectual disservice, similar to sticking a college freshman in a 2nd grade classroom. At this level, you are probably seen as the next Newton or Gauss, and professors will want to attach themselves to you and work alongside you. At this point you bring a ton of value to the school just for attending and they won't mind if you are testing out of course material since they are just happy for you to be there for any length of time, and it just becomes more of a formality anyway.

[dllthomas]

It wasn't "like this" but I just (with parental support) enrolled in the local community college after junior high, took a light load of college work, and got a homeschool program to sign off until I could test out at 16. Did 2 years worth of college work over the 4 years that would have been highschool, then transferred to a "proper" university as a junior at 18.

[Scaless]

For non-geniuses like myself, you can just ask to test out of some of the lower tier introduction courses. I got a typically 4-year degree in 3 years this way. It's called credit-by-examination.

I'm sure for the prodigy-level students there is an even higher streamlined process for keeping them engaged.

[chx]

In the 90s I sort of attended two universities at the same time in Hungary (given the time and the place it's not as big a deal as it sounds) and I said to the second one, hey I know the basic stuff, let me attend the more advanced one and they said, sure, no skin off my back, do whatever you want, if you fail, that's a you problem but if you pass the more advanced tests we will credit you the basic stuff.