9-Year-Old Working On College Degree

[Dave_Berry]

"At 9 years old, Tanishq is already well on his way to completing a college degree."

Prodigy! Natomas 9-Year-Old Working On College Degree - KTXL

[MommaJ]

We see a story like this every couple of years, and I'm sure there are more prodigies out there who keep a low profile. But it seems that at some point they level out and become indistinguishable from the other PhD's and post-docs who took longer to get there. You would expect that if they stayed on their incredibly steep trajectories, they'd be winning all the Nobel prizes and changing the world--but I don't think it works out that way. I'd love to see a follow-up story on all the child geniuses who have been publicized over the last 20 years.

[ucbalumnus]

According to the story, he is currently attending American River College, a community college in the Sacramento, CA area. So much for the complaining that "you cannot find smart peer students at community college" that seems to be common on these forums.

[romanigypsyeyes]

Interesting story, terribly written article though.

It's interesting to see these stories cited in the nature vs. nurture debates.

[bovertine]

If he gets to work now, he could probably beat that 71 year old guy with 29 degrees pretty handily.

[Hanna]

Funny, I would happily let my 9-year-old go to college, but I wouldn't let him be on a TV show about prodigies...that's the part that worries me!

[collegealum314]

There are plenty of people ready for college-level classes (especially community college classes, which have a lot of more introductory classes) at the age of 9. Frankly, you can take high school classes at community college so it's not such a big deal. It's probably less odd socially for a child to take it at a community college than a high school.

They don't have to win a Nobel Prize to prove that it was worth it to let them take the class. If he goes into medicine, maybe the kid will get to start practicing medicine before he is like 31-32, or if in science, get to start producing actual work in academia before he is 30.

BTW, here are a few child prodigies who didn't level out: Terrence Tao (Fields Medalist, got tenure at UCLA at age 24), Carl Gauss (very famous mathematician), Pascal (Pascal's triangle, 18th century mathematician), Norbert Wiener (mathematician who did a lot of interesting applied work, like developing feedback mechanisms for computers), Wolfgang Pauli (Nobel Prize in physics,) Jean Piaget.

I will add that being on the news is not a great thing, though. Though I don't think they sought out the attention, I think they made the wrong choice by letting someone interview him.

[collegealum314]

Funny, I would happily let my 9-year-old go to college, but I wouldn't let him be on a TV show about prodigies...that's the part that worries me!

Agreed. [10 char] ...................

[b@r!um]

I'd love to see a follow-up story on all the child geniuses who have been publicized over the last 20 years.

We have several former child prodigies in math department at Stanford. I'd rather not mention their names on this forum, but they include:

- Someone won medals in both the International Math and the International Physics Olympiads at age 12. He finished his PhD at 17, won some of the most prestigious awards for early career mathematicians world-wide and became a full professor at Stanford before he turned 30.
- An assistant professor who's younger than most beginning PhD students.
- Formerly, the first girl who ever made the US IMO team.

[ameliab12]

The first thing I think of when I see stories of kids being incredibly smart is the Terman study, which was a longitudinal study of kids with extraordinarily high IQs. One of the findings was that the participants ended up being normal people with normal jobs and normal lives. There were no more Bill Gates's or Albert Einsteins in that group than in the general public. Sure, going to college at 9 is different than having an IQ of 150 at 9, but I still can't help thinking that there's a good chance that this kid, like many before him, will sink into the obscurity of normalcy.

[psych_]

We see a story like this every couple of years, and I'm sure there are more prodigies out there who keep a low profile. But it seems that at some point they level out and become indistinguishable from the other PhD's and post-docs who took longer to get there.

I've noticed the same thing and find it quite interesting, which is not to diminish their accomplishments. After being in grad school, I admire people who make it in academia very much--it is truly a brutally competitive field, in terms of securing grant funding and full-time employment, and has very long and demanding hours; in my experience, professors are the only people to whom you can send a work-related email at 10 pm on a weekend and legitimately expect a prompt response. I've never gotten the stereotype of the lazy, 12 hour workweek professor when reality seems to be the opposite.

[xiggi]

The new generations of collegiate OWS ... they can sleep in their backpack!

[Momzie]

Maybe their moms and dads looked at what college tuition will be in TEN years, and decided it would be cheaper to send them now!

[wis75]

Happy so far this thread isn't complaining about letting a child genius go to college. Kudos to the parents for not boxing their children into an average life. Society has a way of conserving the status quo- hence no rise of a "superhuman" species and so many extremely gifted people not being uberachievers.

[Hanna]

Math and music are two areas where prodigies are well represented among the superstars. The youngest person ever to get tenure at Harvard was a math AND music prodigy. (He's a very nice guy to boot.) Mathematicians usually do their best work while they are quite young, too.