Highly gifted children are not “sent to college”. They do not live away from family but rather take college classes while still living with their family as I understand it. One reason they end up at “lesser” colleges rather than being at “elite” colleges. That’s a reason you won’t find boarding schools for profoundly gifted kids- that asynchronous development means they still benefit from many aspects of their age, being a child with loving parents.
Over the years threads with expressions of dismay over the highly gifted pop up every so often. And parents who try to explain. Pushing a child only occurs with wannabes. Those whose kids spend a lot of time with test prep courses to try to eke out extra points…
Many, many anecdotes from CC parents can be written here (again). Just like with all other kids we can all look with 20/20 hindsight and see opportunities not available back when we could have used them. So many factors/variables.
Here’s another thing. Some people are globally gifted but there is always someone with more innate ability in every field. Who is “smarter” the student with a 2400 SAT, 800 GRE but not in the top 10% on the math GRE like someone whose verbal skills are far less? So many questions to ponder…