I don’t think that Allen Cheng makes a good poster child for the hazards of burn-out due to high achievement before college.
Based on his Linked In profile, he completed a Ph.D. in Synthetic Biology at MIT, in connection with his enrollment in the MD/PhD program at Harvard and MIT.
There are MD/PhD programs where the PhD is really a “PhD lite” compared to a PhD undertaken as a solo program. However, Cheng’s PhD looks perfectly real to me. Of the four publications listed on his profile, he is first author on two, one in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and one in Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering. He is third author on two others, one in Nature Nanotechnology and one in Nature Biotechnology. The latter two are quite high profile journals. This is quite respectable, and it should provide the preparation for a good post-doc stint, if Cheng had wanted to follow that route. If he had wanted a good post-doc, he probably would have stayed longer in the PhD program, and not finished up as quickly as he did (given that part of the time post BA was spent on MD coursework). Without really digging into it, I am not sure who invented “massively parallel high-order combinatorial genetics,” but it looks as though Cheng’s thesis advisor at MIT, Timothy Lu, had at least a guiding hand in it, and the role of other co-authors should be known, to form a reliable opinion, though.
I think that Cheng did not find the MD part of the program, and the prospect of the future as a physician, as rewarding as he anticipated. There is nothing wrong with that. I am not sure how much time Cheng spent shadowing physicians, nor how much exposure he gained to actual medical practice before embarking on the MD/PhD program. His high school profile would indicate little, if any. He may have done some medically-related volunteering while he was a Harvard undergrad, but that is unclear.
In my view, for a very bright person, the rewards in physics and chemistry, and probably in engineering, come along at a faster clip than in biology and medicine. There is certainly “grunt” work in any field, but I think that the ratio of demands in terms of physical work and dedication, relative to the demands of intellectual work, may be greater in the biological sciences and medicine. For example, Cheng refers in his blog to thinking about problems while he is doing other things (walking around campus, performing routine tasks). One can handle the higher math courses at Harvard very effectively in that way. One can’t handle lab research in the biological sciences in that way, really. An idea could be generated in that way, but it would still need to be implemented, whereas in mathematics, much of the work could essentially be done while walking around–all that is left is tying up details (assuming one’s idea is right) and the writing.
If you haven’t seen the “Bad Project” video on YouTube, a parody of “Bad Romance,” I highly recommend it. (Blot/blot/Western blot). The portrayal of day-to-day work in the biological sciences is not wildly off, in my opinion. It is a parody, but there is some truth there.
One other factor in the “burn out” hypothesis: Despite the fact that the assorted science competitions for high school students are very competitive, in a certain way they are “low hanging fruit,” in terms of the national recognition achieved, relative to time spent. Later in a STEM career, much more time is needed. The obstacles and discouragements are greater. True, the peaks may also be greater. But when a student is developing a “spiky” profile for college admission, and when the graduate is working in a STEM field later, the question comes up: Is the person addicted to his/her field, or is the person addicted to “success”? There are easier routes to success.