Thanks for writing that. Sounds very similar to my experience in Europe.
I started high school at 15 and it didn't even cross my mind (and would not have been financially possible) to look for one outside of my town, while I had a reasonable one 5 min walk away from my place. There was one school known to be the top in the state, in a big city 50 km away, but it had a reputation of people going on meth to be able to keep studying 24/7 - not so great.
Then I started the local university at 18 - I happened to go to CS because I didn't see anything matching my skills better, but I didn't even write a line of C before that (did a bit of webdev and PHP though). No one in my family and none of my friends had anything to do with CS before me.
Since then I moved country twice for study/work, but I still don't see myself changing country or even state back then at 18. (At that time, I barely started having fixed internet connection at home, didn't even know something like MIT exists, and what's all the fuss about Silicon Valley).
I started high school at 15 and it didn't even cross my mind (and would not have been financially possible) to look for one outside of my town, while I had a reasonable one 5 min walk away from my place. There was one school known to be the top in the state, in a big city 50 km away, but it had a reputation of people going on meth to be able to keep studying 24/7 - not so great.
Then I started the local university at 18 - I happened to go to CS because I didn't see anything matching my skills better, but I didn't even write a line of C before that (did a bit of webdev and PHP though). No one in my family and none of my friends had anything to do with CS before me.
Since then I moved country twice for study/work, but I still don't see myself changing country or even state back then at 18. (At that time, I barely started having fixed internet connection at home, didn't even know something like MIT exists, and what's all the fuss about Silicon Valley).