Those of you who want to sleep easy after reading this, go ahead and write it off in your mind as a work of fiction.

For everyone else:

1% of students are selected and meet with military officials, generally these people are said to come from military schools. (Westpoint) This is a great cover for the program. These blend in with the regular college application, interview, and scholarship discussion process, and many representatives show up from time to time through the trimesters.

Hard to believe right? Well, consider this: Why would the government really fund such a prestigious institution for teenagers... Especially with free room and board.

You are being groomed into your offer, or you are being scouted and not selected.

I was selected for a project under the US Government's "Total Information Awareness" intelligence department.

Allegedly TIA was dismantled, bur in reality, the project just went off the books on paperwork. It operates to this day, with no public oversight.

(A decision made, due to the whistle blowing and intelligence leak events from individuals like Snowden and Manning.)

The idea is that if the program is "defunct" anyone who comes forward and whistle blows it, will not be believed. (Wouldn't have worked in those cases, everyone knew which groups were involved, and the general public knows that they exist NSA, DOD, etc...)

In the case of TIA most people have never heard of it.

Topsail was the specific project I was recruited into. (Used to have a different name, until it moved to NC's coast, specifically near marine field training locations.)

(Ever wonder why some students take beach trips together, with people/other students that they never normally interact with? The program doesn't make people who aren't friends into friends, but if you accept the offer, you're stuck with the group.)

There was a more major reason that the TIA had to be removed from Federal Budgets.

Some of the recruits are not 18 years old. The general public would not be pleased to hear that their tax dollars are being used to provide special forces training to minors.

The state did find a loophole that would help, if word ever got out about this.

I'm sure you've heard the phrasing about the fact that the school and faculty are considered "pro tempore" guardians of the students.

Given that parents have to sign paperwork allowing this... If the school gives you "permission" to begin military training, the decision can be made without interference.

This program is unpaid until you graduate. (Child labor concerns)

Every angle you could think of on this, was meticulously planned. (Just-in-case measures)

Why do they need these programs to apply to minors/teenagers? Why not wait until they are in college and do the same thing?

Those of you who know your neurology and bio well, can guess.

During those pubescent years is when the body is going through massive changes. Thus, susceptible to being conditioned to above and beyond what an adult would achieve in a similar training program.

Some of the training methods in use:

Differential hearing - This is a very interesting thing, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever when I began to be proficient with it. It's end result allows you to hear sounds from much farther away than a normal human. (Downside is that it becomes excruciatingly difficult to sleep, given that you can hear your neighbors, your neighbor's neighbors, nearby traffic, and every animal in the vicinity.) They joke about sleep deprivation there, but it is being induced on purpose because of the  differential hearing side effect. Trimester style school year, work study, and heavy credit hour requirements are part of the scouting process. If a student can perform well in spite of all these things taking up time and causing sleep deprivation, then they know that student can handle the DH side effect.

How does differential hearing work?

Those of you in physics will understand this well. They put headphones on you, playing random loud tracks, music, speeches, gun shots, all sorts of audio, mixed up. They set up a speaker a few meters across the room from you. That speaker plays a movie, song, or TV show that you are very familiar with. You must attempt to explicitly hear that program. Once you reach the point that you say you can hear all of it every time, they will begin to change words or sound effects, to see if you can hear their changes.

After that, you go to a bigger room with two speakers. One is very far from you, the other is close by. You must attempt to hear the far speaker. (This takes months)

Ultimately what we were told about the reason this is done this way is this:

You are not actually directly hearing the far speaker or familiar video.

You are only hearing the sound wave distortions it causes in the closer source to you. Via this process, you are training your brain to interpret those wave changes as audio, which it can process. This creates the "sound" you hear in your brain.

Tl;Dr it is a way to use a proximally close audio source as an amplifier/microphone so that you can hear an audio source that is too far to hear under normal circumstances.

Accelerated Mental Processing - This is nuts and I'm not sure if it even works. It is supposed to make your brain process information faster than it did before. (Limitless?) For this part, you must only listen to speed up audio sources. Nothing will play at 1x, video, nor audio. You hear things sped up, and you see things sped up, over months the speed is gradually raised. Halfway through this training, they begin to give you tasks that you must complete faster and faster, while the instructions for your task are sped up.

Photographic/Speed Reading - Standard training here, this has no secrets, you can go read guides on how to do this, but it was mostly tested by the novel two page snapshot method. Proctor opens a page you have to memorize it in x number of seconds. Proctor closes the book. Then you are asked questions about information there.

After having been on the Topsail project, I would not recommend it. No continental breakfast, the "free" wifi had a pay-to-connect login page.

1 out of 5 stars would not recommend to others. #Yelpicorn