Experience

The Futures Forge Experience

Futures Forge inspires and empowers students to teach themselves, and each other, the skills, capabilities, and tools to understand and lead themselves and others, take responsibility in life and the world, think critically, and solve hard problems. Futures Forge provides objectives and direction, core material, structure, community, guidance and coaching, and a starting framework to build the skills needed to effectively learn quickly: much of the direct learning will come through interactions with fellow students in your section.

Those who choose to join us at Futures Forge understand that the right preparation now can save years of learning the “hard way” throughout one’s life. They don’t want to wait a decade to learn the leadership lessons that most learn from experience, mistakes, and pain. They don’t want to wait until their junior year in college to challenge their ideas of what they want to do with their college education. They want to understand today what learning and study methods work best for them, and reap the rewards forever. If you believe these lessons are of great value, and want to learn them explicitly and rapidly before your college and work careers, then Futures Forge may be for you.

Learn And Live as Adults

Own Your Development

At Futures Forge, you will be free to learn: Futures Forge has no grades or “exams.” You will not perform to meet anyone’s arbitrary standard. You will be inspired to set your own bar, not let your peers down during challenges, to get the most out of every moment, and to grow in pursuit of your personal goals. You will find that this motivates you far more than the pressure of GPA ever did.

You will rapidly master topics of your choosing. You will gravitate towards challenges, rather than be protected from them: learning from both success and setback, you will then with greater confidence take on something harder. You will use the latest tools, including AI, to achieve tasks efficiently, because these are the tools you will use to succeed in the future. You will plan, at your discretion, your college course schedule, your job interview process, or your first startup.

Forge Your Path

You will plan your hikes, and trips to the beach. You will have dozens of evenings with your Section to share ideas over dinner, and to have your perspectives challenged and changed. You will, if you choose, take tango lessons in Buenos Aires, cooking classes in Hanoi, and dives off the coast of Costa Rica. You and your Section will figure out how to navigate haggling for goods, taking trains, and going to jazz clubs in new countries, with new languages.

Futures Forge facilitators will support you in every step. Facilitators will set learning objectives and expectations. They will host discussions and schedule present-backs. They will set up the parameters of projects and challenges, and provide continuous coaching and feedback. They will be available as guides and mentors as students improve their understanding of themselves and the world around them.

Seize Responsibility

As the Course progresses, the Section will depend less and less on facilitators for instruction. Facilitators will gradually pivot more and more towards coaching, giving feedback and supporting students to drive their progress. Students will increasingly find their sources of key information, define and lead challenges, coach each other’s development, and make their itineraries.

In each location, students will partner with facilitators to plan extracurricular evening and weekend events, working together to create the most incredible experience that they could–or couldn’t yet–imagine.

The Futures Forge Learning Approach

Our learning approach puts our students in charge of their development. We won’t sit you down in a lecture hall and talk to you: this is ineffective. Decades of research have repeatedly shown force multipliers in learning speed and retention when learners have seven Pillars:

Purpose: Understand how what they’re learning will help them directly in their ambitions
Interest: Are intrinsically interested in the topic by developing their motivation and aligning it with what they’re learning
Application: Are immediately applying what they’re learning in active challenges
Tribe: Are supported and challenged by respected peers
Safety: Are safe to experiment, make mistakes, share ideas, and learn through “failure”
Feedback: Are receiving rapid feedback from everyone around them
Accountability: Have the right pressure to “show up” every day.

After one year of learning in this environment, you will find that you are far ahead of your peers at college or work, on your first day. This learning approach is how we teach more in one year than you’ll learn in two years anywhere else: the lessons of modern pedagogical science are behind both what we teach and how we teach it. These principles manifest in our DNA, the code that generates everything we do:

The DNA of Futures Forge

Futures Forge was designed to answer the following question: “If we designed learning and development for top aptitude high school grads today, from a clean sheet, what would it look like?” Centuries of research and practical experience have shown us how intelligent and motivated young adults learn best: we built this understanding into the fabric of Futures Forge. This DNA is the blueprint for both how we design learning experiences, and how our team works.

We work and learn these five ways:

  • Rarely do people at any age do the work to understand what really motivates them. But this understanding is an X-factor in both college and one’s early career. Those who successfully align their work with their values and priorities are better performers, more persistent and consistent, and happier. They have autonomous motivation: the ability to motivate themselves regardless of the external environment.

    At Futures Forge we work to understand ourselves and our values deeply and understand our world, our work, and our study. This allows us to build, maintain, and reset alignment to maintain our performance and joy.

  • We refuse to create comfort zones. We will not coddle ourselves or our students. Our goal is to develop power, resilience, adaptability, and skill, and to enjoy the rewards of rapid growth. We do not take comfort in being surrounded by an echo chamber or by being told what to think; we know that our growth is greater and our life is richer if we surround ourselves with new perspectives and a true diversity of minds.

    At Futures Forge, we rapidly iterate through incrementally more challenging learning experiences. We embrace risk and live at the edge of our comfort. We welcome mistakes and small “failures,” and learn from them to take on the next challenge ahead. We live and learn worldwide to make every aspect of life a learning experience. We embrace and encourage each other to take nothing as gospel and to curiously interrogate important assumptions that many take for granted. And our facilitators provide structure, guidance, and feedback to make sure that students are stretched, but not lost. Through these scaffolded experiences, our students grow more powerful and more confident each week.

  • We aim to learn rapidly, become deeply aware of ourselves, and build a strong network of close friends and allies. All of these require us to embrace both sides of feedback.

    Receiving: To learn the most possible from all feedback, and clearly express gratitude and respect for the person helping us

    Giving: To generously and compassionately provide helpful feedback, with the skills to make it clear, manageable, succinct, and actionable

    This is a secret weapon for success, especially for those early in their career, who usually don’t receive frequent feedback. Those who do can understand their strengths, weaknesses, and preferences much better, and act accordingly. They can understand their and others’ reactions better, and respond more compassionately and intentionally.

    At Futures Forge, we integrate frequent and thoughtful feedback into every single thing we do: every project, presentation, and conversation, is an opportunity to learn, and we ensure that we and every student receive that opportunity.

 

  • The world’s information is all available online: it can be found via Google, explained on YouTube or Coursera, and analyzed by GPT. But our learning and personal growth happen best when surrounded and supported by a community of motivated peers. The primary benefit of an Ivy+ education is the integration with fellow Ivy+ students: the curiosity, drive, intelligence, and learning mindset enhance our learning, and the bonds formed to serve us our entire lives. However, these communities do not need to exist on a campus: they can be anywhere and everywhere.

    At Futures Forge, all of our sessions are in-person, and our Sections live together as groups. These Sections, both autonomously and with direction, support and accelerate learning, share and challenge their ideas, and develop powerful lifelong relationships.

  • Rapid, high-intensity learning requires students with ability and motivation. Having an exclusively high-performing Section creates the conditions for significant development. A high-performing peer group also guarantees that students will all contribute to challenging team projects, can teach each other new insights and perspectives, and inspire each other.

    At Futures Forge, we curate top-5% of students. These students have demonstrated cognitive ability, drive, and other measurable factors that make them ready to benefit from FLC and leave in the strongest position possible. They each have strengths they can use to uniquely approach challenges and help each other learn, and the capacity and willingness to grow at every opportunity.

 

Cadence

Each Section lives in a guest house in or near a city overseas. Much of your group discussions, study time, and meals will be in the common spaces in these guest houses, in cafes, or co-working spaces.

But as appropriate for each Module, we’ll venture forth. We’ll get outside for discussions when teams want to do so. The Health and Wellness module will involve experimenting with different exercises outside, and measuring the different ways your body responds. To solve difficult technical problems, we may go help a local nonprofit with a sticky problem of their own. A Weekly Challenge after a module on Persuasion and Selling Your Ideas is likely to take you out of the Section: you may already be launching your first small business online. Facilitators will plan presentations, discussion groups, feedback periods, office hours, and other key get-togethers throughout the day. But much of your time will be yours to manage. How much you learn will depend on your willingness and ability to:

  • Learn how you learn and work best

  • Shape your time to your deep values and priorities

  • Work with your Section to schedule group work together

  • Divide and delegate

  • Use tools such as generative AI

Facilitators, Mentors, and Teachers

There are 3 categories of people at Futures Forge from whom students learn:

 
 

Teachers

who transfer knowledge to students: are the best in the world at their specific topic. Students learn from their videos, MOOCs, books, and other highly prepared materials from the best who put them on there. Futures Forge uses whichever teacher in the world is the best teacher of a given topic.

Mentors

who coach students through growth: have substantial experience leading and operating businesses, and leading/coaching young adults who are early in their careers. They meet frequently with students and facilitators to support progress.

Facilitators

who run the exercises and challenges and live in residence with students: who are deeply trained in our structure, pedagogy, tools for feedback, etc. They have demonstrated intelligence, ethics, and the ability to coach others. Closer in age to the students, able to connect with them and work with them “from where they are now.” They work with and get help from mentors to handle tougher situations.

A Sample Week: FLC Week 4 in Costa Rica

  • 0800: Morning activities: yoga, running, meditation, or free time, followed by breakfast

    0900: Practice present-back with team

    1000: Half of teams present back on their plans to become experts in 4 weeks, and receive live feedback from peers and facilitators

    1100: The facilitator shares the briefing for this week’s Challenge: Motivating a Team Member Not Pulling Their Weight

    1115: The Section splits into teams to learn about Growth Mindsets and accelerated learning techniques, online

    1200: Lunch

    1300: Return to discuss how to best approach learning and practicing Growth Mindsets and other learning techniques

    1530: Section decides the overnight learning objectives for tomorrow

    1600: Free time - Section breaks up into Spanish language study group, running group, meetings with facilitator-coaches about planning a 3-year college schedule, and Weekly Challenge prep groups

    1800: Head out for dinner at a nearby cantina

    2100: Return home for self-organized group study, laundry, board games, wind-down, and sleep

  • 0800: Morning activities and breakfast, prep for the day

    1000: Present-back on Growth Mindset, receive live feedback

    1130: Choose the topic that you’ll become an expert in, 4 weeks from now

    1200: Break for lunch, eating meals that the Section prepped at a group cooking class, and taking a vote on what are the two group trips that they’ll take this weekend -- an argument ensues over which football team the Section will support

    1330: Prep for the Team Member Motivation challenge: research, planning, and feedback

    1600: Break: some groups interview business leaders they know about team member motivation, others continue to study groups or working out; one group is studying how to use technology to overcome language barriers without learning the language at all

    1900: Dinner in the guest house

    2100: Study groups, Coursera class study, prepping present-backs for tomorrow, wind-down

  • 0800: Morning activities and breakfast, prep for the day

    1000: Present-back on Team Member Motivation Challenge plans, how the Growth Mindset is key to getting the most out of the experience

    1100: Teams are paired with facilitators for Team Member Motivation roleplays

    1200: Lunch

    1300: Team Member Motivation Challenge prep, with facilitator support and feedback

    1700: Break for relaxing, working out, etc

    1900: Dinner in the guest house

    2100: Study groups, Coursera class study, prepping present-backs for tomorrow, wind-down

 

  • It’s Weekly Challenge day!

    0800: Morning activities and breakfast, prep for the day

    1000: Weekly Challenge kicks off: each team has a tough roleplay conversation with their “unmotivated team member” facilitator, with other teams providing spot feedback

    1230: Lunch

    1330: Discussion and feedback on key learnings from the Challenge: what was learned from the research and the roleplays?

    1500: Final presentations on study plans for becoming an expert in 4 weeks on a topic of choice, with feedback

    1600: Free time - Section breaks up into study groups, workout groups, facilitator office-hours, etc

    1800: Head out for dinner at food trucks: the weekend begins!

  • Over the 3-day weekend, the group has elected for 8 activities between Thursday and Sunday evenings. Each activity has a leader, and everyone has signed up for some of them. This weekend’s activities are:

    Football match

    Rainforest hiking

    Fiesta / rodeo

    Dancing lessons

    Saturday night town crawl

    Street market

    Art and history museums

    Cooking class

    Around the fun activities, there’s a lot to do. Spanish study group is still on all weekend. Three groups have volunteer cooking shifts. And lots of new modules are kicking off next week!

 

Travel

While Futures Forge could hold our Foundational Leadership Course in domestic classrooms, new environments cause the brain to be much more active and open to learning. Futures Forge takes advantage of this by using travel to stimulate learning in students.

Our travel schedule embodies Future Forge’s DNA: it scaffolds an increasingly challenging living experience, without introducing danger or distracting hardship. Students first live and learn in familiar and welcoming Costa Rica: many students already speak Spanish, and many others will want to learn. Argentina’s accent will test students’ Spanish comprehension, and its cash economy introduces an element of thoughtfulness to daily living and spending.

  • Argentina, more developed, remains quite friendly to visitors. Futures Forge gives students greater power and responsibility in executing the logistics for the Section to travel and live in Argentina, giving students an incredible opportunity to practice project management and group responsibility. While English can often suffice, students will get far more out of the experience if they can find ways to read and communicate, whether through learning or by utilizing new technology.

    Vietnam, our final location, brings most students well outside of their cultural element. Students will need to navigate new cultural norms. If they want the full travel experience, they will need to navigate a country with a (likely) unfamiliar language, haggle at markets, try new foods, and adapt to new customs.

    We value safety deeply, and will not travel anywhere where the US State Department issues a Level 3 or higher travel advisory. (We will have a strong preference for Level 1 travel advisories, but in July 2023, Denmark, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands all received a Level 2.) For any Level 2 that we travel to (Costa Rica), we practice increased caution and work closely with a team on the ground to avoid any unsafe areas of our destination.

 

Costa Rica
Personal Growth Accelerator
Population: 5.2M
Top language: Spanish
% English Speaking: 38%
Human Dev Index: .809
State Department Advisory: 2

Argentina
Personal Growth Accelerator
Population: 46.6M
Top language: Spanish
% English Speaking: 15%
Human Dev Index: .842
State Department Advisory: 1

Vietnam
Career Accelerator
Population: 100.0M
Top language: Vietnamese
% English Speaking: 50%
Human Dev Index: .703
State Department Advisory: 1

 

Is Futures Forge for You?

If you demonstrate top cognitive and psychological potential for excellence, we encourage you to join us. Those who join us and graduate will be more mature, more confident, more capable, and more prepared than their college sophomore peers to excel in all aspects of life--and the comparison won’t be close at all. You’ll start faster, adjust faster, and accelerate through both college and your career faster than those who opted to go straight to college.

Futures Forge is not for you if you are or consider yourself:

  • Easily upset, agitated, or triggered

  • Bothered by many points of view from many parts of the world

  • Paralyzed by global travel and handling the complexities of being in new places

  • Uninterested in being responsible for your own time

A high degree of drive and responsibility is necessary to thrive at Futures Forge; we recruit for it, and we will expect it from every student. The freedom and reward are exceptional.

Where will you ride your bicycles this weekend? How will you plan dinners around allergies? What topic do you choose to become an expert in for the Expertise module? Who’s leading Tuesday morning’s presentation? All of that is up to you. You’re adults, and Futures Forge will treat you like it.