Grad school admission for a 14-year old

[vijay12]

Hi,

Thank you for all your thoughtful emails, we really feel your affection and kindness.
We understand all your suggestions. Being gifted has it's own 'baggage'. Their giftedness has to be handled in a delicate manner for the well being of the child as well the society (if you may!).
We have to admit, these kids would be socially awkward, whereever they go. Only time and loving/caring guidance can help them to mature in a meaningful way. We are not perfect parents, but we try mighty hard to be one. We have interrupted our careers to shuttle him back and forth from University. We would relocate where ever he goes, we would want him to stay with us as long as he wants or atleat till he is 16. His professors at his current University are very kind. This year he is a Teaching Assistant/Grader in mathematics dept. He loves to help other students with homework or if they have any questions.
Vanderbilt offered him full scholarship for UG transfer, Emory was interested, too.
We are scheduled to visit Harvard/MIT during his Fall break, it would be interesting. One of his professors arranged a meeting for him with the Mathematics Head.
Thank you all your help.
Life is a journey. Nothing is permanent, we are all waiting here (at 'this airport') to catch our 'next flight'!
Vijay

[wis75]

Vijay- Good luck to your child in his life's journey. It sounds like you are on the right path with your child- be sure he picks the program that seems to fit him best. May he always enjoy life and learning.

re the x years of medical school discussion. Once you have the degree you are no longer "in medical school". It's too bad this physician couldn't leave town and do an internship/residency in a different program. The experience of finding out how other places do things is invaluable.

[2Daswell]

“I'm having real trouble envisioning how this is accomplished for highly gifted children, since they pretty much accelerate themselves, beginning several years before kindergarten starts. When my 3-year-old was trying to decipher individual words off a restaurant menu, was I supposed to tear the menu out of his hand? Not allow him to sit in my lap as I read to him, lest he learn too much? Keep him away from computers? Not answer his endless stream of questions?
I don't see how one cannot help but to accelerate an eager-to-learn child other than by outright bad parenting.
”
When my D started reading at 3, I don’t need to limit her reading but let her went with her pace to read as many different subjects of books as possible. Finding that’s not enough, I let her learn other languages. She is fluent with three languages. She also loves drawing and arts (and music). She was doing them on her own for a while and then I took her to take music classes. She is good at two instruments and still draws. I had no desire to let her accelerate and leave home early before she’s old enough that she doesn’t need parents to be around. I tried to build her diverse talents up and it worked fine.

But everyone is different. I think it worked out for us while we are in a university town where many professors’ children are gifted - even though to different degrees. She has some intelligently comparable peers and there was no sign of unhappiness. There was no holding back from us.

By ‘pushing’ I don’t mean these children need to be pushed to accelerate on learning, I meant there is no need to push parents to let their children go through academic acceleration by putting kids to institutions away from home at young age. And there is no need to encourage children who are doing well in their normal environment to go out of home being homesick. There are many other choices.

In top universities, there are plenty of gifted young people who went through normal path and are in colleges at their normal age. I don’t see it as unusual for extremely gifted children to go through normal path and grow up with similar age peers.

Acceleration or not parents are taking risks anyway, one risk to let gifted children go on without proper social environment (with friends) the other risk holding them back. There is no prescription, just don’t push others to go the way one think others should.
For an early bloomer, acceleration could be right at first but too stressful later. This may be the reason the three MIT graduates I mentioned were so stressed out.

On a side note, It’s totally unnecessary to call other’s approach ‘bad parenting’ while we all tried hard to make our children the best they can be.

I am done with this discussion. :-)

*****
To Vijay12, kudos to all you've done for your child. I wish you and your child the best and everything work out for you.

[collegealum314]

For an early bloomer, acceleration could be right at first but too stressful later. This may be the reason the three MIT graduates I mentioned were so stressed out

Yes, well, there's a confounding variable there in that they all went to MIT.

[LoremIpsum]

On a side note, It’s totally unnecessary to call other’s approach ‘bad parenting’ while we all tried hard to make our children the best they can be.

I did not say or suggest that your approach or anyone's here is bad parenting. What I said is that intentionally denying an eager child answers to questions they have is bad parenting. There are plenty of parents like that, but they are not likely to ever gravitate to posting on CC.

It's nice that your daughter had interests in subjects not covered extensively in school, but mine had no interest in learning another language (although I am fluent in one) or learning an instrument (even though my spouse was a decent piano player). For my sons, it was math, science, reading, Legos and computers.

I would not have been comfortable in sending either son away from home at an early age. There is almost always a local solution, and a kid, brilliant or not, needs lots of one-on-one time with his parents to grow up happy. Vijay is showing truly amazing commitment by being willing to relocate, in order to satisfy both her child's intellectual and emotional needs -- that's as rare as the child she is nurturing.

[2Daswell]

Interesting article and forum.

Don't know if the school still exist.
Genius School by Nina Leen 1948 | Genius School: Portraits of Gifted Kids in 1940s New York | LIFE.com

Actually good comments.
Criticisms about MIT

[cobrat]

The Life Photos from 1948 are from a school run by Hunter College. Currently, Hunter not only runs an elementary school program for gifted kids, but also a well-renowned gifted middle/high school(Hunter College High School).

Both require an exam for entrance and the former requires one to live in Manhattan. I know for certain the latter certainly does and one can only take the exam in around 6th grade after qualifying by scoring above a certain high percentile on the 4th or 5th grade NYC wide exams.

Although I technically qualified on the last part, the Catholic Elementary School Principal and staff never sent anyone to Hunter College High School so they were ignorant of the application procedures. By the time they found out about it, it was too late to register for the exam.

[texaspg]

I see lots of kids getting into top colleges from hunter college each year.

[cobrat]

^ ^

Wouldn't surprise me considering the folks I knew who went there and considering I attended one of their public academic rivals.

[jonri]

There are several posters on this board who are Hunter alums and parents. DonnaL, for example, has written about his/her experiences in the elementary school. Back then, the middle school/ high school was all female and boys had to leave after 6th grade. Stuyvesant was then all male and the Hunter girls were cheerleaders for the Stuy teams. In the 1960s, Bronx Science became the "IT" school precisely because it was co-ed. For a while, it was much tougher to get into BxScience than Stuy. Stuy went co-ed in 1969. Hunter held out as all female until 1977.

[wis75]

Remember giftedness is not "one size fits all". The average gifted kid may be 1 in 100, but there are those who are 1 in 1000 and 1 in 10,000 etc.- all vastly different from each other in abilities and needs. Most gifted students will do fine within their school's grade level and gifted program. Some, like the OP's child, have exceptional needs not met like the vast majority of gifted students.

OP- just be sure you look after yourselves and any other children you have, you deserve a happy life as much as your child does. Your life should not be merely as a parent- you need a significant existence outside of your child. What will you do in a few short years when your child needs to separate from you and be his own person? Will you have a life of your own?