Agreed - the article makes a dubious claim. Many universities regularly accept high school students that haven't yet gotten a diploma as part of their early admission process. All that is required are standardized test scores, a transcript showing what has been learned, and evidence of excellence.
The claim that MIT is somehow a national treasure and unique here seems to miss the point. I know this because I was accepted early admission to MIT and graduated from there.
Extracurricular activities and evidence of capabilities have always carried significant weight in MIT's decision making process, but this is also the case for many other schools. It's only the graduate school process that requires evidence of completion of lower education. Try getting into a PhD program without a high school diploma or an undergraduate degree. And no, I'm not talking about honorary doctorates.
Try getting into a PhD program without a high school diploma
Does any graduate program even ASK if an applicant has a certificate of completion of secondary schooling? Which one?
(Note that the submitted post claims that the author knows someone who received multiple offers of admission to graduate programs without possessing a high school diploma, which sounds very plausible to me indeed.)
Sorry - I misspoke. I meant to say that there's no need to ask for a high school diploma as a qualifier to get into a graduate program - graduate programs require undergraduate degrees with very few (any?) exceptions. Even if the undergraduate degree did not in turn require a secondary (high school) diploma, the undergraduate program was itself a qualifier. The point is that in response to the main concept of this article that you don't need a high school diploma to get into many schools (MIT notwithstanding) is only relevant to undergraduate degrees, and even in that case, is not particular to just MIT.
After college, I went to the University of Chicago for math grad school. (I didn't finish the program--the Northwestern math department was too easy in those days, and my study skills were shot.) Three of my classmates had not finished college, and one had not finished high school either. That one had gone to MIT.
The claim that MIT is somehow a national treasure and unique here seems to miss the point. I know this because I was accepted early admission to MIT and graduated from there.
Extracurricular activities and evidence of capabilities have always carried significant weight in MIT's decision making process, but this is also the case for many other schools. It's only the graduate school process that requires evidence of completion of lower education. Try getting into a PhD program without a high school diploma or an undergraduate degree. And no, I'm not talking about honorary doctorates.