In 1883, Young took the competitive examination for appointment as a cadet at United States Military Academy at West Point. He had the second highest score in his district, but the top candidate decided not to go and Young reported to West Point in 1884. There was then one other black cadet, John Hanks Alexander, who had entered in 1883 and graduated in 1887. Young and Alexander shared a room for three years at West Point. Although regularly discriminated against, Young did make several lifelong friends among his later classmates, but none among his initial class. He had to repeat his first year when he failed mathematics. He later failed an engineering class, but he passed it the second time when he was tutored during the summer by George Washington Goethals, the Army engineer who later directed construction of the Panama Canal and who as an assistant professor took an interest in Young. (It was not unusual for cadets to need tutoring in some subjects. Young's strength was in languages, and he learned to speak several.)