Collison visited Stanford in 2005 for the International Lisp Conference, which was very eye-opening and made him want to attend college in the US, leading him to pursue British A-level exams rather than the standard Irish education path to gain admission.
factualpending
Speaker
Patrick CollisonEvidence Quote
“as part of the programming i had visited the us for the first time um i'd gone to stanford for the 2005 international lisp conference and there was a fairly small conference uh and uh but it was very eye-opening for me uh and i remember you know walking around stanford and thinking man american colleges seem great uh and so i uh you know back in high school in ireland i decided to see if there was some way that i could just go to college in the us the subsequent year and it was sort of a long story but i eventually figured out that i could not do it if i did the standard irish kind of follow the standard irish education path but that i could do it if i did the british sort of terminal examination and so i kind of resumed my sort of self-education except instead of programming i was now studying for these you know british exams”
Source
Patrick Collison: Philosophies for Running Stripe, Hiring, Decision Making, and Reading— The Knowledge Project PodcastCreated: 8/10/2026, 11:17:01 PM
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