I’m helping a friend with his postbacc application. He’s 17 and due to graduate from the CSULA Early Entrance Program shortly after his 18th birthday, after starting at 13. He’s inexperienced with applications (because he started college so young his mother did his app for undergrad) and previously believed it would be in some way bragging or unhelpful to mention his age when applying, but we’ve managed to disabuse him of this notion.
How should he express his early achievements in his app? He knows to put his DOB on, but he’s unclear of exactly how to express his EEP status (he claims the formal name is only ‘California State University, Los Angeles’ rather than ‘California State University, Los Angeles - Early Entrance Program’, and it would be wrong to enter the latter).
Maybe it differs by field, but I actually would find it to be boastful if someone made it a point to put something like that on their application. Frankly, having a student that young is not in any way more valuable to me as a PI and might legitimately be detrimental depending on the student’s maturity level. Bragging about it isn’t going to put my fears to rest about maturity level, either.
I come from an engineering background. You didn’t say what field this was, but maybe someone else around here has other opinions from their own field.
His field is biochemistry. A mutual friend is a biomedical Ph.D. candidate and very insistent that it would only be helpful to mention.
All apologies if I’ve expressed it in a way that sounds like we’re encouraging him to be a braggart. It’s more that previously he thought it would be detrimental to mention at all (he comes from the kind of high-achieving background that gives one an unrealistic idea of how common teenage graduates are), and we’ve since reassured him it won’t be presumptive to mention the context of his undergrad. Re. maturity level, I appreciate your comment on the topic (sincerely! I’m trying to get as much information on this as possible), but it doesn’t seem like it’d help him much to show up as an 18 year old without any prior ‘warning’ if it is a detriment.
The adcom will know his age from application materials. Otherwise I agree with @boneh3ad that it could be more detrimental than anything to highlight.
Your application should reflect your ability to train and succeed as an independent researcher, and that has little to do with age.
People sitting on these committees are all different, of course, but I can tell you how I’d feel if evaluating an application like this. If I look through application materials and come away not realizing the applicant is quite young like that, I would be all the more impressed by it. If instead the applicant is highlighting it every chance he/she gets, I’d come across thinking he/she felt entitled.
I’d also suggest that it probably won’t matter much if at all in terms of actual admissions. Where it will matter more is when it comes to individual PIs deciding on students to offer RAships. That’s where the maturity level becomes even more important because you are asking professors to invest a large chunk of change out of their research budgets to pay for the student, and we like to be reasonably confident that the student is prepared enough, both in terms of academics and maturity, that our money isn’t being wasted.
Graduating at 18 is impressive. But I agree with other posters that it shouldn’t make an impact on grad school admissions, and shouldn’t be mentioned in the statement of purpose.
(Background: My D was accepted to several top-10 PhD programs when she was 19. Age was never mentioned, or even hinted, in her applications).
I agree; think your friend’s got the right instinct here. I don’t think it’ll be particularly helpful to highlight the fact that he’s 17, and it could be detrimental if he mentions it in the wrong way.
Quite frankly, I can’t see a doctoral program really caring all that much. What they’re going to care about is what he can do compared to where he is academically and to his peers (academically speaking). Best case scenario they shrug and don’t care about his age; worst case scenario, they assume that he’s too immature to handle a doctoral program or that he thinks graduating early means something in the science world (which it doesn’t).
^Exactly this.
He should approach his application pretty much the same as he would if he was 21, which is demonstrating that he’s got strong science skills and a clear passion and dedication to a science career. He doesn’t need to emphasize his EEP status or anything like that.
Honestly, I would downplay it as much as possible. Just put the birthdate where it’s legally necessary, but don’t otherwise mention it. No need to advertise.
I wholeheartedly agree with the posters who suggest to downplay it. I graduated early from everything and have found it a terrible disadvantage in the workplace as well as at school. It’s actually one of the reasons I ended up running my own business for a while – it was really, really hard to be taken seriously as young as I was (plus I look super-young even for my age). I’ve found that some professors gave me a rougher time than other classmates just to see if I could “really hack it.”