Exxon, Microsoft Recruit Genius Teens at MIT

"Several of my best friends in the world date back to that summer," says 41-year-old Steve Strong, who was a member of the first class, in 1984. Following a career as an academic physicist, Strong joined the D.E. Shaw Group hedge fund in 1998, where he worked as a managing director until last year, when he retired. (It pays to be a whiz kid.) D.E. Shaw is famously picky, with only one applicant in several hundred invited to join the firm, according to the company's Web site. Yet, "I don't remember seeing a resume with 'RSI' on it and not giving that person an interview," Strong says.

-- Reported by Carmen Nobel in Boston.

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