My father had a similar experience as he lost both of his natural-born parents by 10 and was forced to flee Mainland China as a refugee without any family at 12 in '49 along with many others due to the ongoing Chinese-Civil War and Mao’s takeover.
Once he arrived in Taiwan, he worked full-time during the day for a few years while attending night preparatory classes for students whose educations had been disrupted by the wars. In his case, the last time he attended classes uninterrupted was sometime in middle school and despite never attending HS, managed to score high enough on the college entrance exam to get free tuition to the #1 university and a complete full-ride(including room, board, books, and a small stipend) to the #2 university at 16 in the early '50s.
What made it more impressive was that he was not only competing against HS graduates who were a few years older, but also a multitude of older students whose undergrad educations were interrupted during the Chinese Civil War and had some undergrad under their belts.
After graduating college at 20, he had to put in his 2 years of military service as a conscripted lieutenant* in charge of an infantry platoon. Most of the conscripts were around his age or older and all the NCOs under his command were grizzled veterans of the Second-Sino-Japanese War/WWII and the Chinese Civil war.
However, among the accounts he related from that period of his life were several instances of inexplicable incompetence/idiocy among both career and fellow conscripted junior officers who were elite U graduates**.
As I said before, inexplicable incompetence/idiocy/hubris isn’t limited only to the much maligned Millennial generation.
- This was an option for anyone who were able to gain admission to university and opted to complete undergrad before completing their service obligation due to a shortage of junior officers in the Army(especially infantry) at the time. This program ended up getting eliminated by the mid-'60s when this shortage of officers was no longer an issue.
** Apparently, accidentally shooting oneself in the foot with the M1911 .45 pistol was an issue due to university officer trainees overcompensating for the kick and there were a few instances when some officer trainees from his university officer training class almost fragged themselves/NCO trainers during live grenade throwing practice.