Kid graduated from Harvard at 16 and became a top lawyer at age of 20. This is beyond impressive.
https://amp.kansas.com/news/business/biz-columns-blogs/carrie-rengers/article264919489.html
Writer Ronan Farrow has a similar profile.
Composer Alma Deustcher blew me away when I saw a 60 Minutes segment on her.
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To be more precise he got an online degree from Harvard, studied law at a local university in Kansas and is now working for a Wichita law firm. While he’s obviously very smart and has achieved a lot at a young age, you have to wonder if he might have been better positioned to achieve more in 10 or 20 years time by going away to university at 18 and then heading to a top law school.
It’s going to be very hard for him to have a significant national impact if he stays in Wichita, KS. The article suggests he stayed in KS because his mother was ill. That doesn’t sound like someone with unbounded ambition (and also makes me curious whether that had something to do with his parents’ publicity seeking).
Regardless of who has more raw intelligence, this isn’t remotely the same as Ronan Farrow with his Rhodes scholarship and connections at the very top of US society.
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It does seem that there is a measure of exploitation here.
He graduated from Harvard Extension School, which allows anyone to enroll in classes. It’s a continuing education program where the average age of the students is 32. I scanned several articles and couldn’t find a quote from a single Harvard professor, administrator or classmate who knew him. If he were a generational talent, a change maker, one would think someone from Harvard would be excited to claim him.
His accomplishments would be far more impressive if he had attended the two schools in reverse. Graduating from a local university like Washburn as a teenager, where he could have lived at home but interacted in person with professors and classmates, would have been a reasonable approach to meeting the social/emotional needs of a child while still challenging him intellectually. Instead, his parents chose a path where he was sequestered in his room, taking online classes with students twice his age.
If instead of a Washburn Law he had matriculated to Harvard Law, where the average LSAT is 20 points higher and the acceptance rate is orders of magnitude lower, that would have been exceptional.
But his parents chose a name over an experience, and now he is litigating traffic violations.
One does not get the sense from any of these articles or his interview on the Kelly Clarkson show that he has the kind of drive or curiosity that someone like Rowan Farrow had at such an early age. When asked about learning that he passed the bar, he said, “My parents were ecstatic.” That comment is telling. In the same interview he says his interests include trials, litigation and keeping his city safe. A prodigy is one who has the accomplishments of an adult expert or made groundbreaking contributions to a field at an early age. Passing the bar is impressive, these legal interests are not on the level of a prodigy.
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Harvard Extension does not have open admissions. Small point. But you have to take three classes and then apply for admission. Financial aid does not cover those first three classes, I believe.
The focus on Alma was, at least initially, due to her age. She is still only 17. We’ll see what happens as she matures. At present, it seems she writes neo-Romantic music and, according to that link, is very judgmental, in a reductive sort of way, of late 20th and 21st century composers. This kind of critical attitude toward innovators as writing “ugly” music oversimplifies the field and it is not mature to criticize the work of others in defense of one’s own.
We were in college with her father. Apple, tree and all that.
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It sounds like I oversimplified, but aren’t the three classes open to anyone, then a student is admitted if s/he performs well at in those classes (B or higher)?
It’s not open admissions, but it’s not a highly selective process, either. If (traditional) Harvard accepted all applicants who could earn a B or better in 3 general education classes, their acceptance rate would likely be over 50%.
As I said, small point.
My brother (who was a prodigy himself) wasn’t impressed. He said, any good student with an overzealous parent can accelerate the academic process to achieve this. However, he sees value in creating the buzz and gaining recognition, as it can help this kid go in politics or become a TV personality.
Overzealous parents and a creepy mentor/benefactor who seems to be appropriately named RAThburn. It’s downright Dickensian.
Likely 80%+ of the students at Harvard and 20 other schools could do this if they wanted.
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I am more impressed with 2 of my son’s friends.
- son of a manager of a fast food restaurant.siblings average. skipped senior year of HS, MIT, Stanford PhD, prof now. parents would say, where did he come from?
- UCB for UG, began MIT grad school at 16. on Google X team. so handsome
both happily married.
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High bar historically. My first thought was Mozart.
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Except Mozart, for everyone else in the article, I can think of at least one non-prodigy in their field who are better than or equal to them.
Not sure if getting to their final place a few years sooner than others means much. If you count it backwards, like x years before he died, he became xyz, it becomes even less meaningful.
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I didn’t want it to sound like I was being hyperbolic when I posted, but I agree that yours is likely the better number.
I thought this thread was about our CC kids. 
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This doesn’t pass the smell test.
If Duke TIP is anything like Hopkins CTY, they don’t really keep track of how well students did in their programs. It’s simply a money making program for them.
And getting admitted to Harvard Extension School is simply a matter of passing a few classes and filling out the forms. It’s not like there is anybody that needs convincing as a lot of high school kids take Harvard Extension classes (including one of mine).
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I also thought this was going to be a thread about Mozart.
In a similar vein, Bruce Wasserstein seems like much more of a prodigy.
Wasserstein was the pre-eminent investment banker of his generation. He graduated from the University of Michigan at age 19. Wasserstein entered Harvard Law School at the age of nineteen, ultimately graduating cum laude as one of the first students to receive a joint MBA/JD degree and garnering honors as a Baker Scholar with high distinction from HBS. He graduated from Harvard Business School in 1971 and later studied at Cambridge University in England as a Knox Traveling Fellow, earning a graduate diploma in Comparative Legal Studies in Economic Regulation.
After graduation, Wasserstein began working at the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York. He quickly left law practice to join the mergers and acquisitions department at The First Boston Corporation. When I met him, I believe he was co-head of investment banking there and, with Joe Perella, built it up to a major force. In 1988, he formed his own investment banking firm, Wasserstein Perella Group and served as its CEO until the company was sold to Dresdner Bank in 2001. He was named chairman at the newly formed Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein before he moved to Lazard in 2002. He then took Lazard private in a complex transaction.
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