Bill Gates - the Early Years Essay Example

The Early Years William Henry Gates III was born in 1955 into a family with a history of being extremely powerful and wealthy. Bill grew up the son of a successful Seattle-area attorney, and was curious about everything. This is apparently not the story of a poor kid making good. Gates was the middle child and only son, with a sister one year older, and another sister nine years younger (Lowe, p. 1). Bill’s parents met while still in college. Bill Sr., Gate’s father was a partner in a prominent Seattle Law firm, his mother, Mary Maxwell Gates, a former teacher, was unusually well connected and active in Seattle’s social and civic life (Lowe, 1998, p. 2). Bill Gates was a straight-arrow student, but never enough to be the best. His motto was to push everything a little too far. He not only wanted to win the game, but he wanted to break the rules at the same time in order to prove he was smarter than the person writing the rules (Time 2008). He attended a private school, where he excelled at mathematics and became fascinated by personal computing, which at that point was in the formative stage.
Educational Experience Throughout his high school years, Bill Gates was able to obtain admission to Princeton, Yale, and Harvard as a National Merit Scholar (Lowe, 1998, p.17). His decision was to attend where his father had attended which was Harvard. In the fall of 1973, Gates had his first classes as a student of the University. He was the typical freshman as he did many things every student is known to do once in college. He skipped classes, stayed up all night in the computer lab, loved playing poker all night long, and classmates even recall noticing him stay up for over 36 hours. Gates was able to program himself into upper level classes that needed many prerequisites even though he was only a freshman. He would miss half the semester, show up for the final, and get the best grade in the class. He was naturally gifted with the knowledge to