<p>I also encourage anyone in this position to contact Davidson and even apply to be involved in the Young Scholars program. The support is tremendous. (IMO)</p>
<p>It’s not necessarily easy walking this path of radical early college and different families come to different conclusions about what is best for early college kids. We can only do the best we can at the time. Sometimes the decisions work out, sometimes there are bumps in the road.</p>
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<p>The college classmate I knew who got his PhD at 24 graduated college a year ahead of me at 17, spent a few years teaching English in Japan, and finished his Phd at 24. </p>
<p>Never had an issue making friends of any age…including his own and is happily married to a woman who is around his age. </p>
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<p>Not borne out by most kids I knew of who started college from 10 onwards. Going back to the “accelerated kid == social misfit if not restrained” stereotype, I see. If anything, some of them tended to be better at socializing with peers precisely because they end up having to learn some social skills earlier than their non-academically accelerated peers. </p>
<p>Moreover, making friends with little kids with whom there’s a substantial academic and/or maturity gap in childhood/pre-adolescent years is extremely overrated from what those kids recounted when they encountered that mentality from misguided relatives. Almost all of them are now well adjusted adults who make friends from a wider age/background range than I see with most adults who weren’t as gifted/accelerated. </p>
<p>Interestingly enough, I’ve encountered dozens of high school dropouts with high SAT scores and once they entered college/demonstrated signs of accelerated levels of giftedness from the words of their Profs/grades/awards. </p>
<p>Their main reason for dropping out of their high schools…being bored out of their skulls from attending schools which not only didn’t have the means to cater to their accelerated academic/intellectual levels…but also punished them for it. Did I mention none of their same-aged peers could relate to them…or cared to because they “didn’t like brainy nerds/geeks”? </p>
<p>Some also ran away from home because their parents joined in punishing them for that giftedness because of jealousy, misguided fears they’ll become social misfits if they’re not confined with kids their age, etc. None of them found solace with their academic/intellectual peers until they somehow found a way to gain entry into accelerated early college programs like Simon’s Rock of Bard or upon entering undergrad. All ended up thriving in college and are now well-adjusted adults.</p>
<p>Getting back on topic, it is my understanding the OP’s son has already/is about to completed/e his undergrad at the age of 14 and is now seeking to apply to PhD programs. </p>
<p>My basic opinion is if his Profs and adviser think he’s capable, it would be wrong to hold him back…especially considering he’s already shown he’s excelled at the undergrad level. </p>
<p>This isn’t remotely like a kid deciding between top 5 or top 20 university…the differences in scale in terms of this kid’s intellectual/academic capabilities are exponentially far greater than that.</p>
<p>"If anything, some of them tended to be better at socializing with peers precisely because they end up having to learn some social skills earlier than their non-academically accelerated peers.
"</p>
<p>Again, you are missing the point. They can have however good social skills but there are not many 10-year-olds in colleges. A 10-year-old can make friends with all older ones, no problem, but there are few of his age. When the 10-year-old becomes 14, he will graduate from college and get into graduate school, still all 18 to 30-year-olds around, not his age. When he is 18, he is graduating with a Ph.D. and starts seeing freshman his age come in but too late he is getting out of school. Going into a job (unless in a college), all colleagues are older… Get a teaching job in a college will be the only way to see people his age.</p>
<p>I personally know three with issues. I just don’t want to see more.</p>
<p>Wow…</p>
<p>I agree that he shouldn’t be held back or whatever, but I do feel for him socially-wise.</p>
<p>My son is in a math PhD program at an elite school and they get-together on weekends for parties, going to bars, BYOB BBQs, etc. What is this kid supposed to do while his PhD peers are off doing post-21 activities?</p>
<p>Is there a univ that is known for having kids like him, so he wouldn’t be the only one?</p>
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<p>For undergrads at least, Simon’s Rock of Bard regularly accepts HS sophomores or sometimes younger kids who desire early college admission to start their undergrad in lieu of staying at their original high schools. In fact, they’re known for it among parents with academically advanced kids who sought/seek more academic/intellectual challenges than what their high schools/school districts could offer. </p>
<p>Knew one student who transferred in to my LAC as a 16 year old college junior. Very independent and able to hold her own in both the classroom and out in general society considering she also held down a part-time job as a waitress as well. </p>
<p>Knowing her, she’d hate to be stuck back in her old school district with same-aged kids who not only had nothing in common with her, but also bullied her aggressively because of her accelerated academic/intellectual abilities. Did I mention the admins/teachers would also join in the bullying because they had the “really accelerated gifted kids == social misfits” mindset? </p>
<p>Don’t really know about grad schools because folks who enter Phd programs at the age of OP’s son are rare.</p>
<p>MIT, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and others are not unfamiliar with students in the age range of 15-20 in grad school. State universities such as U of Michigan, U Wisconsin, and others are not unfamiliar with having a few grad students in the 14-20 year old range. I would say many top schools have had some very young grad students such as this young man:</p>
<p>[Boy</a> prodigy now a doctor and a young man - Chicago Tribune](<a href=“College freshman at age 9, medical degree at 21”>College freshman at age 9, medical degree at 21)</p>
<p>or this young man:</p>
<p><a href=“http://esp.mit.edu/learn/teachers/davidad/bio.html[/url]”>http://esp.mit.edu/learn/teachers/davidad/bio.html</a></p>
<p>I think for early college students who know what they want (as opposed to early college students who meander because they are not singularly focused), holding them back would not be beneficial.</p>
<p>We don’t know anything about the OP’s credentials, so we don’t know what kind of a grad school would be the right place, but no doubt there is one out there for the OP’s child.</p>
<p>I agree with most of what Cobrat has written here, except for a small portion of this item:</p>
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<p>Gifted programs, in my experience, are absolutely horrible about accommodating the needs of exceptionally gifted children: The educators who run these places have a sense of inflated importance because their average test scores lead the other schools in the region. They think that you, the parent, should be grateful that your child got in and that they are the experts whose wisdom you need to defer to. These educators simply cannot comprehend that classes geared toward the 95th or 97th percentile will still leave those in the 99.95th or 99.97th percentile daydreaming due to boredom three-quarters of the time they have to sit in class.</p>
<p>I’ve had much better success dealing with magnet schools that are actually willing to accommodate one-on-one with grade skips or prerequisite waivers.</p>
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<p>Right. Many kids who are smart enough to excel at even the top schools don’t have a strong desire to pursue a career after graduation. Many times it’s like, “well, I sort of like this subject, and this is the next step.” Age aside, it doesn’t make sense at all to tell one of the few seniors out there that is super-enthusiastic about something to wait for years to do what they want. And typically, these super-advanced kids are that advanced because they love learning.</p>
<p>Another problem with these discussions is that the only way people accept that a kid made the right choice about skipping a ton of grades is if they become world-renowned in something, like winning the Nobel Prize. Maybe after they get a PhD they will want to do something else, but so what? I know many people who were the right age who got a PhD and decided they didn’t want to be an academic. Does that mean they made the wrong choice by going to grad school? </p>
<p>Bottom line is if someone is super-enthusiastic about something, especially if that falls under the umbrella of something that contributes to society, then let them do it.</p>
<p>Quote from
Boy prodigy now a doctor and a young man - Chicago Tribune</p>
<p>“Despite his gifts, success was not guaranteed. Several medical schools wanted no part of him because of maturity questions. Even at Pritzker, some faculty members worried they would be robbing him of a normal adolescence.”</p>
<p>This showed there are maturity questions regarding academically accelerated students in the broad spectrum. This boy still spent 12 years in college and medical school (3 years for undergraduate degree and 9 years for med school), indicating some difficulties. A friend’s daughter who went to U.Chicargo and then it’s medical school completed her degrees in 11 years (4 years for undergraduate degree and 7 years for med school) - the normal duration of most of their students.</p>
<p>^ ^</p>
<p>The report seems to omit the fact he was an an MD/PhD combined program. In that context, 9 years sounds about right considering he earned a PhD & and an MD.</p>
<p>Also, unless your friend’s D was in a similar type combined program, 7 years for strictly med school is a bit long as most stand-alone MD programs are 4 years. No one I knew who went to med school took 7 years for just an MD.</p>
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<p>Um, not really. It’s not like this happens everyday. People, faculty included, will often “have questions about maturity”. It doesn’t mean they have seen people who had problems with maturity. And med school is notoriously fickle about being social, moreso than any other field. In fact, in my school someone told me I had better join a frat to get into a top med school. </p>
<p>No doubt some people do have maturity issues at that age, but probably they don’t have stellar recs from profs as was stated in the OP.</p>
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<p>Uh, no, it most probably means it took him 4 years to finish the PhD part. PhD’s are research degrees, not classes, and time to complete it varies. It may depend on the lab or the project moreso than the student. FYI, the average biology PhD takes 5.5 to 6 years. And I’d wager most profs at top 5 biology departments took at least 5 years to finish their PhD.</p>
<p>Wow, I can’t believe someone is using this kid as an example of someone who had difficulties.</p>
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<p>From what I heard from friends who went on for bio PhD programs, it’s usually closer to 6-7 years. The 5.5-6 year average also includes many exceptional students who finish a Bio PhD in 5 or less. Yano finished within the norms.</p>
<p>Four pages from one post.
Tanishq is only nine, he has a few years till grad school.
[Child</a> Prodigy Finds College Admittance Elusive](<a href=“http://www.voanews.com/content/tanishq_abraham_prodigy/1493494.html]Child”>Child Prodigy Finds College Admittance Elusive)</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t say “difficulties,” I would say he was finally being challenged. I would also guess that his education at this level is broader than that of his peers, as well as being deep – by that, I mean he could well have occupied himself with learning peripheral materials tangental to his core competency, just because it’s interesting.</p>
<p>It’s also much, much easier to rapidly accelerate the learning of basic skills than it is to maintain the same pace at a higher level. Basic skills largely involve pattern recognition: learning how to read, understanding arithmetic, learning grammar and punctuation. A select few children can learn to recognize these patterns with minimal repetition, thus saving themselves enormous amounts of time, compared to conventional classroom approaches.</p>
<p>I helped raise two sons who were later tested as being highly gifted. I don’t recall either one of them needing to be “taught” to read – they pretty much figured it out on their own, although they enjoyed being read to frequently. My first son expressed an interest in learning more about math and English grammar the year before he was to start kindergarten. So I sat with him an hour a day doing math and an hour a day doing English grammar – no homework, I just explained the lesson, asked him to verbally solve a couple questions and moved to the next chapter. Six months later, we had finished the 6th grade English book and had gone from 2-digit addition to beginning algebra – his big problem was long division because his handwriting was too big to finish a problem on a single 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper. </p>
<p>None of this seemed odd at the time or even exceptionally out of the ordinary; we figured he was garden-variety gifted with the advantages of personal attention, lots of books and lots of computer software in the house. It wasn’t until I started comparing against other kids that I began to suspect something was different. The first few times I heard parents bragging about their 2nd or 3rd grader’s latest accomplishments, I thought to myself, “Poor kid must have a learning disability.”</p>
<p>Then he got accepted to the most academically elite public school in the city, and we were given a tour and shown a video on how much our kid would have learned exactly one year from now, toward the end of kindergarten. I was appalled! My son had passed that stage at least 6-9 months earlier and this was to be 12 months from now – from the most elite school around? He ended up going elsewhere, starting in 2nd and finishing the year completing 3rd.</p>
<p>Now these two sons are both over 18, and they no longer stick out like a sore thumb. Learning the most basic skills is learning upward, but once that’s accomplished, it’s followed by learning outward – knowing a lot about many subjects, not just about one’s core field of interest.</p>
<p>wow, I feel old.</p>
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<p>The OP may very well be a ■■■■■ prodigy.</p>
<p>"7 years for strictly med school is a bit long as most stand-alone MD programs are 4 years. No one I knew who went to med school took 7 years for just an MD. "</p>
<p>I said med school, didn’t say M.D. The 7 years including internship and residency and until she got a certificate to be able to go on her own. The kid in the article spent 9 years and hasn’t started his residency yet. And yes, my friend’s dauther was in the same program with both doctorate and medical degrees.</p>
<p>"Uh, no, it most probably means it took him 4 years to finish the PhD part. PhD’s are research degrees, not classes, and time to complete it varies. "</p>
<p>Depending on what Ph.D. programs. One can go for Masters first and then go into Ph.D. prgrams. And there are Ph.D. programs directly after undergraduate degrees. Most cases of people around me spent 2 years for masters, 4 years for Ph.D.'s or 5 years directly after undergraduate. For OP’s son I was assuming a 4 year accelarate accomplishment of getting his Ph.D. after his undergraduate degree, could be 5 years or longer depending on his situation.</p>
<p>Just recalled that other than the three I mentioned with issues, I had also personally know another 3 academicaly accelerated individuals graduated from MIT with troubles afterward: One graduated for more than 3 years and don’t want to find a job, currently staying at home with his parents (working on projects that he likes from time to time). One is a stayhome dad and never worked. The third one graduated last year and felt too tired to continue to work so hard, and so didn’t look for jobs. With these, there are 6 cases I know.</p>
<p>Those who advocate this cause can apply it to their own children, or encourage children who would have drop-out or have low academic performance otherwise. Other than that, I don’t agree with pushing (or encouraging, whatever word they want to use) parents or these children to go that route.</p>
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<p>I know a few people who did a similar MD-PhD program in a consortium program between MIT and Harvard Med. All of them told me while combining both accelerated course requirements for the PhD and Med school, the research and writing up of the thesis was the great unknown…especially if one happens to hit a snag in the research. </p>
<p>Also, everyone I knew who went to do a Bio PhD alone has said finishing in 5 or less is very unusual. They and most people they’ve known tended to finish more around the 6-7 year mark. This includes folks who went straight into the Bio PhD program from undergrad. </p>
<p>As for Yano’s inability to start residency, read that has much more to do with set minimum age guidelines for medical residency/hospital work which says nothing about his actual potential/capabilities as a medical doctor.</p>