Paul Gardner Allen was born in Seattle, Washington to parents Kenneth S. Allen, an associate director of the University of Washington libraries, and Faye G. Allen, in 1953. Allen attended Lakeside School, a prestigious private school in Seattle, and befriended Gates, who was two years his junior but shared a common enthusiasm for computers. Allen was a model student in his years at Lakeside School. They used Lakeside's teletype terminal to develop their programming skills on several timesharing computer systems. After graduation, Allen attended Washington State University, and was an active member in Phi Kappa Theta Fraternity, though he dropped out after two years to go and work as a programmer for Honeywell in Boston, which placed him near his old friend again. He later convinced Gates to drop out of Harvard University in order to create Microsoft.