My kid is no genius and is just a hard working and motivated kid, and he will go to Stanford next year. He took Calculus as a Senior along with many sophomores who were better than him in math. I also got the sense there are way more hard working kids than geniuses among those accepted at Stanford. Let’s keep it real here: getting 4.0 GPA and 1550+ does not make one a genius, but my kid did not even get that.
My advice is to find a mentor. Having someone in the field who is willing to guide, challenge, and advocate for you can make all the difference in the world.
I like the idea of finding a mentor. I also think it’s important to take it one semester at a time and take classes that are of interest. Things have a strange way of working out… and students change their interests all the time based upon their experiences.
Thanks for the stories everyone.
Although not in the science fields, I would imagine it’s not that different than most things. To be truly excellent and create value you need to:
Be a great listener
Genuinely possess and display empathy
Have strong critical thinking / discernment skills
Be a good communicator (written and verbal)
Care (you have to want to make a difference)
Strength in these areas will absolutely bring you success no matter what you do.
@rickle1 I think its a bit different in fields outside of science because prodigies in those fields are not recognized as often. There are very few kids winning awards in political science and literature as 11 year olds. So kids can’t readily compare themselves to the objective achievements of others as easily.
But your list is great!
Hmm. What does she consider “making a real contribution in science” to mean? Does she want to win a Nobel Prize, cure cancer, change the course of physics? In that case, the reality is - no, she probably will not do that.
But if her “contribution” includes working on interesting science, discovering new ways to solve a medical problem, exploring/defining new areas of physics, or synthesizing new drug candidates to cure disease - well, that goes on every day in labs all over the world, by smart people who were not child prodigies. Many (most?) of them never won a high school award or got a perfect score on the ACT.
I worked in pharmaceutical research for a long time and worked with some amazing scientists. Some of them are pretty famous in their own niche of chemistry and pharm sci. What did they have in common? Curiosity, intelligence, and perseverance - mostly perseverance. I know I’m just an anonymous poster on CC and you have no reason to trust me, but believe me, I know this about most bench/clinical scientists: they value the work ethic and the intelligence more than the intelligence alone.
I mean this nicely, but your daughter is worrying about the wrong thing. Don’t worry about the child genius part - worry about the many brutal years ahead in that MD/PhD program! Perseverance and perspective are the key.
Thanks @scout59! Just to clarify, I’m not talking about my daughter here, but one of her friends.
@gallentjill I observed few of my cousins who were about a decade younger than me throughout their academic and career development for about three decades. Three of the cousins were quite top achievers who went straight to top ivy, ivy equivalent, and top LAC from high schools, and two of them ended up became surgeons. And yet, there was another one, an older sister of one of these three cousins, where was just a regular kid who performed averagely in high school and just went to state university. As far as I know, she was an OK performer in college and probably gave up being a pre-med during that time, and did not know what to do after college, so she signed up with Peace Corps to do two years of oversea services. After she came back, she was not sure what she wanted to do, so another two years spending in retail or something like that. Then at the mid 20s, she wanted to become an vet and applied to few vet schools, and I know the one she really wanted to go did not get in probably due to her average undergraduate. She ended up enrolling with a higher ranked vet school (probably due to her Peace Corps EC, I guess), finished it, went on to get her PhD in animal-human transmission type of diseases. Since then, she has been working for CDC to fight bird flu and other kids of animal to human diseases.
It was an inspiration story within our family, and I always use this cousin’s story, and not the three other cousins, to encourage my own daughter for her academic and career choice.
@amnotarobot That is a great story!
I think young kids really should not be on this CC. It is very discouraging to be reading all the chance me thread listing their accomplishments of perfect grades and scores and president of every clubs and wanting to go to top 10 schools. Majority of kids are not geniuses who go to Ivys and equivalent schools. Most are just motivated, hard working, very curious kids who want to learn and better themselves. They will mature each year in their academic career. One may not look like someone who will contribute much to society, but maturing in school, socially and academically will allow them to develop into a great human being. Kids who only crunch numbers and just try to get better grades are lacking this maturity. I would tell the kids to just enjoy school, learn as much as you can to just learn. If you love what you are doing, it will show in your grades as well as on your college application.
Every kid has a different slope of growth. If you viewed my kid in his high school freshman year, no way you would think he was bound for Stanford: 155 PSAT and unmotivated kid. Besides, many kids are good at certain areas that are not recognized or rewarded in academic settings, and who will go on to change the world in many different areas. I have seen kids who went to MIT end up at so-so graduate schools and kids who went to state schools end up at MIT graduate schools. Sports is just one area like academics; and high GPA does not equal smarts. Persistence, self belief, support from people close to the kid, ability to take on risks and to get along and character etc are far more important.
My cousin and his wife. They are much younger than me, so their experience is relevant. Two bright, but not genius kids, graduated from a state school, went on to graduate studies in the state school. Fast forward, they are both cancer researchers working for an Ivy League institution, judging by the number of their publications, they are contributing something to science.
A lot of what makes a good scientist can’t be tested for, it’s a completely different type of thinking. I know because I am an extraordinary tester - I haven’t met a standardized test that I wasn’t able to ace, and yet I’d make a lousy scientist.
Most kids who do “research” in high school have a family connection to get them in to a lab. Most are just doing grunt work, the PI told some grad student to find something for this kid to do, and the grad student did. They really aren’t making ground breaking discoveries at 16. The paper they were listed as the fourth author on may sound impressive, but it doesn’t mean that 20 years from now they will be doing anything grander than the kid who was more ordinary in high school.
@downallunder This is exactly why my own daughter is staying away from CC. I, on the other hand, can’t seem to keep away. It works out well though, because I get to vent my own college OCD here, and keep it away from her. :-*
I don’t know if this angle would appeal to this girl or not, but you could mention the possibility of going into industry rather than academia, where being a good communicator and good manager on top of being a good scientist (but not needing to be the tippy-top scientist) can translate into an interesting and financially rewarding career.
@downallunder My point is that most kids (or almost all the kids) who go to Ivys and other top schools are not geniuses. I know because I went to one as an academically unmotivated kid. My sole aim at the Ivy school was read a lot, improve my writing and decide on what I wanted to do. Amazingly, I graduated in 4 years with 2.9 gpa even though I switched my major 5 times; I consider this my biggest accomplishment at my UG. The funny thing is I still managed to get into a top 5 graduate school then because once I switched my major, I averaged nearly 4.0 gpa. You can guess what my gpa was before I decided on my final major. At a graduate school, I came across many kids who went to West VA and other state schools from Iowa etc who were smarter and got better grades than most Ivy graduates. There were a few kids from the same Ivy school at the graduate school I went to, and the joke among us was that we were not a good representative of the UG we went to. lol
Many unmotivated kids at certain phases of their lives will suddenly start accomplishing great things once they become motivated.
My husband has a biology PhD and has been in industry for more than twenty years. It’s rewarding - he gets to do research and travel to conferences etc. He has no regrets. Some of his grad student friends had multiple post docs before getting a tenure track position at a smallish, teaching based university. He definitely would not have been happy with that.
In the past decade, universities have been cutting back tenure track faculty and hiring 1 year lecturers and lots of postdocs. My husband calls it “highly educated migrant labor”. The hours are long, the pay is low and with each passing year, the chance of a TT position at a research university gets slimmer. It all starts to look like a giant Ponzi scheme, with a few top notch scholars at the top of the pyramid.
What @VickiSoCal says about the high school research stuff is so true! Many of these kids have parents in academia or with connections to people in academia. I have looked at the titles of these papers and they are so highly specialized that they could only have been done as part of a research team. I wouldn’t worry about those kids. Your friend’s kid has all of her undergrad years to think about pursuing science as a career.
The reality is that there are a lot of really accomplished people out there, at all stages of life, and in academia, this can be really visible. In high school there are those that are getting all 5s on AP tests and are publishing research and taking calculus in 10th grade. In college you’ll see people getting Goldwater scholarships and not just publishing, but publishing in Nature and Science, all while taking seven or eight classes a semester. For grad school there are fellowships like NSF and NDSEG and Hertz, or the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships. And once you have your PhD, you start noticing those who are Sloan fellows and get NSF CAREER awards, all while winning teaching awards. And so on. Of course, there is a lot of room to be a successful scientist, even if you feel like a normal kid in high school. But comparing yourself to the people around you who are more accomplished than you will be pretty miserable until you retire.
Jobs and Wozniak invented a device called the personal computer and founded a company called Apple. Both were college dropouts. Percy Spencer, the inventor of the microwave oven, had no education at all. It’s not about education or prestige. It’s about ambition.