He was the first in his family to attend university, and originally enrolled to study arts-law. This included economics and philosophy, but he dropped out of those subjects and took up maths to "round it out", but eventually changed to a maths major. He graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Science with first class honours in pure mathematics in 1991. While at university, he was one of the world's top-ranked debaters, reaching the final round of the World Universities Debating Championship three times (1990, 1992, 1996) and winning "World's Best Individual Speaker" (1996). He also won the Australasian debating championship twice (1988, 1990). He was also President of the University of Sydney Union.