UPDATE: iwanttogotocarnegiemellon.com rejected (opens in new tab)

It's too bad. The kid looked like he put a lot of effort into that site and and from the looks of it he is sufficiently competent. College Admissions is a crap shoot. They may as well set minimum requirements, race quotas, and then randomly accept people. Any assertion of "selection skill" beyond that is bogus. I got into one of the "top" schools in the country, and on one of the first days of school an admissions officer came up to me, asked my name and shook my hand, telling me that my essay was among his favorites ever. I never saw the guy again, to this day, and it's a small school. I don't think I saw any of the admissions officers actually around the student body they created. And further, while I acknowledge the talent of my fellow students, only very few were "super stars" with academic qualifications that far exceeded anyone I had met before. Most students (including non-athletes, non-legacies, etc) could be replaced by select students from my high school, who probably worked just as hard, and just not gotten lucky. I think the decision looks worse on Carnegie Mellon than it does on the student that made this page.

I strongly recommend he consider the University of Waterloo. It may not have that shiny Ivy League veneer, but since his main draw to CMU was its industry ties, he'll be at least as (if not more) happy there.

With his obvious drive and skill, he'll have no problems getting internships anywhere he wants from UW. And one you've got the internship, nothing else matters.

Check out the bottom of the page to see total vote tally and blog post!

I wouldn't worry about it. Going to a "name" school is nice, but it's neither necessary nor sufficient to going on and having a great career. What's more important is what you do in life, rather than where you went to school. If you still want to do C.S. and work in the tech industry, you have a TON of choices.

Go go a "lesser" school and get a C.S. degree. Or even go get a degree in something other than C.S. Or don't go to school at all, just find a job (I bet you will be able to, based on what you already know) and just teach yourself all the other stuff on the side (works well if you're a natural autodidact).

Or consider a hybrid approach: get a job (full or part time) and take night classes for credit, possibly also inter-mingled with MOOCs that interest you. Don't worry about finishing a degree or meeting any certain deadline, just take the classes that interest you, learn useful skills, and build cool shit.

If I had a suggestion for someone in your shoes, I'll throw this out there: If you do go to school, either full-time, part-time, seeking a degree or not, don't take just technology courses. Take a few classes in economics, finance, history, political science, etc. Even if you take those at a community college, or as Coursera courses or something. When I look back on my career, I definitely think I would have benefited from studying more of that stuff.

If I had a second recommendation, it would be to take all the math and statistics courses you can handle.

A high school kid with a two page resume? lol