<p>^
OP’s son is not in pre-med but mathematics/economics. For straight Ph.D. it could be 5 years or Possibly less. (if not a top grad school) Top school is another story, with on average a much more talented/smart/intelligent student body, higher faculty acheivements, and higher school academic reputation the bar for prelim and dissertation is also possibly higher.</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>
<p>You don’t know that. It could be some other reasons but may not be age related. Age requirement is 18:</p>
<p>U.S. Office of Personnel Management
Medical
c. Age – (1) Minimum entry age requirements. Under 5 U.S.C. 3301,
Generally, unless a different minimum entry age is contained in the standard or examination announcement for a particular position, applicants for any position in the competitive service must be (1) at least 18 years old, or (2) at least 16 years old and:
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<p>The same could be said about your assumptions about his lack of capabilities that you’ve been asserting in the last few posts. Odd considering that the time he took to finish both the PhD/MD was within the norms of friends who did their PhD/MD programs at MIT-Harvard Med.</p>
<p>“Odd considering that the time he took to finish both the PhD/MD was within the norms of friends who did their PhD/MD programs at MIT-Harvard Med”</p>
<p>But not within the norm of U.Chicago’s identical med program.</p>
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<p>I don’t know where you get the idea that such children need to be pushed or “encouraged” to accelerate their learning. Bright children are motivated by positive feedback from parent and teachers. Brilliant children are internally driven, high energy, and determined to learn, usually in periodic manic bursts of passion.</p>
<p>Between those manic bursts it’s possible to slow them down – or at least redirect their interests. Which we did as parents. My older son started high school at age 9, but was then pulled out of school for a year so we could travel the world for 3 months. My younger son finished high school in 3 years and had enough AP/college credits to finish college at the state flagship in 2.5 years if he wanted to. Instead we encouraged him to take a gap year to pursue his own interests and he then chose to go to Brown for 4 years, using his APs only to get past prerequisites and “learn more stuff.” It’s not a race to get into the job market and those extra few years are certainly not wasted time; learning never stops.</p>
<p>Yes, many kids with very high IQs have issues; it’s been widely reported that there is an “optimal intelligence” range, typically from 120-140 IQ. These people can outperform their peers and yet still fit in socially. Move up another standard deviation and many can feel isolated and alone with almost no one out there who understands them and with whom they can talk as equals. </p>
<p>These kids don’t have problems because they were accelerated, they have problems because they feel like aliens within their own society. Sometimes these kids avoid issues for many years by continuing to do what they do best – learn – and then one day look around and ask, “Now what?” The trouble they encounter at this point could just be a period of re-evaluation and a necessary step for the next phase of their lives – just like what most adolescents go through at some point.</p>
<p>It would not surprise me if Yano “slowed down” his apparent progress through med school to absorb multiple specialties rather than a just a single one. What’s the rush to finish? He may well come out of this as a much better doctor or researcher because he’ll be able to bind knowledge from across multiple specialities and come to conclusions others will miss.</p>
<p>I posted about Yano back on page 1. My understanding is that he didn’t get his MD until 21 because he couldn’t be licensed as a doctor in Illinois until that age. There was no indication that he had any problems. He took his first year of medical school at 12-13, got his PhD at 18, and resumed medical school then.</p>
<p>LoremIpsum “What’s the rush to finish?”</p>
<p>That’s the whole point. You just confirmed it. Thank you.</p>
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<p>So are you against all acceleration or just mindless acceleration to finish college and grad school in near record time?</p>
<p>I’m an advocate of rapid acceleration of the basic skills (reading, writing and arithmetic) until such point that the child can teach himself anything that excites him. At that point I advocate going for broad knowledge across many disciplines.</p>
<p>I also think it’s cruel to have such a child sit in a classroom endlessly where information is spoon-fed to him at one-tenth his natural learning speed. I liken that to an adult being forced to sit and watch Barney the Dinosaur reruns for 30 hours a week and then get tested on the small details. What? You didn’t get a perfect score? Obviously you must not be as smart as you think!</p>
<p>There are emerging solutions to this problem, however: virtual schools where you mostly learn at home, except for one day a week in a classroom. Maybe you are officially required to spend 5 hours a day studying, but so what if your kid finishes the material in an hour and then explores other subjects of his own choosing via Kahn Academy or by googling his way around the Internet?</p>
<p>I think the greatest danger to rapid acceleration beyond high school is becoming a media celebrity. Then it becomes: if you achieved X by age 16, you are a failure if you’re not a world-famous success by age 25. Who can live up to such expectations?</p>
<p>So are you against all acceleration or just mindless acceleration to finish college and grad school in near record time?</p>
<p>I am against acceleration for children who are doing fine and excel academically through regular process. Unless they are unhappy or have trouble with the environment they are in, there is no need to encourage acceleration.</p>
<p>My D was tested Stanford-Binet IQ at 156 (99.98 percentile, ceiling is 159) and she was doing fine in school at young age with lots of non-academic activities and leadership work, she draws and loves arts. I allowed her much time to play with her friends and she always came up with creative things to teach them or play with them. </p>
<p>She took college courses since 9th grade and excel. She was happy with that and I am satisfied with her happiness. I dont see a need of acceleration for kids like her. When she is in Cornell Engineering she is challenged enough because of so many other bright peers around her age there and I think that is good enough for her.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I saw many sad stories of acceleration. On news we saw success stories. There are many more untold stories that are not so pretty.</p>
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<p>Well, obviously not everybody is like that. And not everybody has the same opportunities. It’s very easy to say that someone should just take college classes early. It would have made sense for me to take community college classes when I was in elementary school, but they told me “no” because I would make other people uncomfortable. I couldn’t even sit in on the class. It was just down the street. So in elementary school I ended up learning 2 years of math in like 6 years in an effort to slow me down so that I would fit in the top track. It was great people were looking out for me like that, right?</p>
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<p>No, there are lot more stories about kids who were unhappy because they were held back. It is <em>very</em> common.</p>
<p>^ ^</p>
<p>And I’ve encountered far too many kids who would have been or were miserable because of parents who mindlessly restrained them to keep them with “kids their age” without accounting for what their kid aptitude and desired learning speed and whether those “kids their age” were suitable peers in terms of at least…being open-minded about their giftedness to not use it as a basis for bullying. </p>
<p>From what I’ve heard from those who lived it…making friends with “kids their age” is extremely overrated and while they understand relatives, parents, and other adults may mean well…could actually be detrimental to their physical/mental health. </p>
<p>The ones who avoided being held back by such parents had happy childhoods and became well-adjusted adults because they were let loose to pursue things as THEY wanted. </p>
<p>The ones who I encountered who were held back at such high levels of accelerated capabilities tended to rebel and/or drop out of their high schools out of sheer boredom and being bullied by small-minded students and sometimes admins/teachers in their school districts. </p>
<p>The ones who managed to find their ways into college…as indicated by high SAT scores or subsequent college accomplishments/awards ended up leapfrogging over most of their undergrad peers…but at the cost of suffering through a wretched childhood/teen years before getting there. </p>
<p>Also, keep in mind that not everyone who is gifted or even non-gifted…but intellectually curious necessarily want to be at the top of their class. I’ve known plenty of gifted and non-gifted intellectually curious student who’d rather be in an environment where they must work hard to be in the middle-above average than be in an environment where they’re the top 10% student or higher.</p>
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<p>How many people live in university towns?</p>
<p>And not everyone’s parents have colleagues with labs.</p>
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<p>Also, not all college/universities and/or courses are created equal. </p>
<p>Many HS classmates and friends who transferred because they didn’t feel academically/intellectually challenged enough at their first institution have remarked at how wide differences are between lower-tiered and higher-tiered college academic teaching levels and student peers on average. </p>
<p>Incidentally, my urban public magnet HS did allow really accelerated students to take college courses. However, if they are at that point, they’d have to take college courses at 4-year colleges like Columbia or NYU because none of the local community colleges are likely to have any offerings fitting their needs once they’ve exhausted HS offerings.</p>
<p>“there are lot more stories about kids who were unhappy because they were held back.”</p>
<p>I said if kids are gifted and unhappy, let them go through acceleration and to me that would be the only reasonable cause for going that path. </p>
<p>Regarding colleges, there are colleges almost everywhere and they don’t need to be top colleges for young kids to explore.</p>
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<p>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?</p>
<p>I don’t see how one cannot help but to accelerate an eager-to-learn child other than by outright bad parenting.</p>
<p>Hi,</p>
<p>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</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.
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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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>I am done with this discussion. :-)</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>Yes, well, there’s a confounding variable there in that they all went to MIT.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>